Court Opinion

ID: 9703948
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:13:59.260599+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:53.291673
License: Public Domain

PEDERSON, Judge
(on petition for rehearing).
In his petition for rehearing Muhlhauser states that we have ignored legislative intent in our interpretation of Chapter 57-28, N.D.C.C., and he then paraphrases § 57-28-03, N.D.C.C., as stating that “the notice of expiration shall include the original, or any subsequent, tax sale certificate * * If this were the complete statement of that section, we would be faced with the improbable if not absurd conclusion that the notice could include either the original or any subsequent tax sale certificate.
*6Although § 57-28-03, N.D.'C.C., is so excessively punctuated with commas that it torments the mind of any reader, we can reach no other conclusion than that three or more years must have expired from the original or any subsequent tax sale certificate before notice thereof is to be given by the county auditor.
If there is any confusion as to the intent of the Legislature, found in § 57-28-03, N.D.C.C. (and likewise in § 57-28-01, N.D. C.C.), there is complete clarification of legislative intent in the remaining provisions of the entire Act as adopted by the Legislature in 1941 (S.B. 205, 27th Legislative Assembly; Ch. 286, S.L. 1941). In §§ 5 and 7 of that Act (now §§ 57-28-05 and 57-28-07, N.D.C.C.), the Legislature prescribed the specific form of the notice and therein required the county auditor to state in the notice “that more than three years have expired from the date of each of said tax sale certificates.”
The rehearing is denied.
ERICKSTAD, C. J, and PAULSON, SAND and VOGEL, JJ., concur.