Court Opinion

ID: 9520154
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 01:32:16.939231+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:45:37.317219
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE WARD, dissenting: The majority’s holding that the tax-deed buyer’s conduct satisfied the statutory requirements is unacceptable to me. The appellants purchased the property from Bourseau on January 15, 1966, and the deed they received, which was recorded, stated they were residents of Cook County. The name of Steven B. Stern, 39 South LaSalle Street, Chicago, appeared on the deed as the notary and as the person to whom the deed was to be mailed after recording. The appellants provided attorney Stern’s affidavit, which was to the effect that no inquiry had been made of him by the tax-deed buyer as to the appellants’ address. The buyer did not challenge the truth of the affidavit. The majority does not say that this knowledge of the appellants’ attorney’s name and address imposed any responsibility on the tax-deed buyer in the exercise of good faith and diligence to malee inquiry of the attorney as to the property owners’ address. Rather the majority states: “We need not consider the appellee’s failure to contact the party who notarized the warranty deed in the absence of an allegation in the notary’s affidavit that he knew appellants’ location.” Presumably the majority is saying that its treatment of the case might be different had the attorney superfluously and unnecessarily (to me) added that his file contained the address of his clients. I consider the trial court’s holding that the tax-deed buyer had a responsibility to make inquiry of the attorney was correct. The failure of the tax-deed buyer to advise the court, when he testified at the ex parte hearing on his petition for a tax deed, that Bourseau had conveyed the property to the appellants to me furnishes additional ground for holding in favor of the appellants. MR. JUSTICE GOLDENHERSH joins in this dissent.