Court Opinion

ID: 9591053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:01:33.997233+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:26.846454
License: Public Domain

Fatzer, J.,
dissenting: I regret that time does not serve to give adequate expression to my views as to why I cannot approve the district court’s judgment denying the plaintiffs relief. I can only hastily give the reasons for my dissent, which are based upon the district court’s findings of fact and conclusions of law.
Findings of fact Nos. 23 and 24 read:
“Personal property in Kingman County is assessed at 30% of value.
“K. S. A. 79-501 provides that all real and tangible personal property shall be assessed at thirty percent (30%) of its justifiable value. Since this act was passed in 1963 much progress has been made in re-evaluing real estate so that assessments throughout the state will be uniform and equal. A re-evaluation of real estate for Kingman County is planned but same has not yet taken place. The Real Estate Assessment Ratio Study for Kingman County for the year 1965 showed that the assessment ratio on rural real property was 20% and the median ratio for all real estate was 21%. The ratio for urban real estate was 23%.”
Under the facts as found, the district court concluded the rate of assessment or values as fixed by the county assessor was not so excessive, arbitrary, oppressive or grossly discriminatory that it showed bad faith on the part of the taxing officials to constitute constructive fraud on the rights of the plaintiff-taxpayers.
*440The district court found the median ratio of assessment for all real estate in Kingman County was 21 percent or nine percent less than 30 percent of its true value. In Addington v. Board of County Commissioners, 191 Kan. 528, 382 P. 2d 315, the plaintiff’s property was assessed in excess of 30 percent and other property in the district was assessed at twelve percent of its true value. It was held that the duty to assess at full value is not supreme but yields to the duty to avoid discrimination and that the rate of assessment of the plaintiff’s property as compared to the rate of assessment of other property in the county was so arbitrary, oppressive and grossly discriminatory as to constitute constructive fraud on the rights of the plaintiff as a taxpayer and destroyed uniformity and equality of the rate of assessment entitling the plaintiff to the relief sought as to the illegal portions of the tax paid under protest.
The district court’s finding that personal property was assessed at 30 percent of its true value and that the median ratio of assessment for all real estate in the district was 21 percent constitutes on its face a finding of discriminatory assessments between the plaintiffs’ property and the assessed value of real estate. (Bank v. Lyon County, 83 Kan. 376, 111 Pac. 496.) The failure of the State Board of Tax Appeals and the Director of Property Valuations to place into effect in Kingman County, or any other county for that matter, assessments with respect to personal property and real estate simultaneously, constitutes nothing less than a systematic arbitrary, capricious and piecemeal application of the laws of this state with respect to the assessment of all property, and I cannot agree that this case should be affirmed. I would reverse the case and direct that judgment be entered in favor of the plaintiffs.