Court Opinion

ID: 9711661
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:36:11.30444+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:35.172892
License: Public Domain

CuRRiE, J.
(dissenting in part). While I concur with the result reached in the majority opinion, I cannot agree with that part thereof which states that the personal service of the written notice of the application for the tax deed on the plaintiff was not binding upon the other co-owners (his brother, sister, nephews, and nieces, constituting the heirs at law of Mary Carroll).
The learned trial court has stated my own views on this issue so well in his memorandum opinion that I avail myself of the privilege of quoting therefrom as follows:
“The purpose of the notice is to notify the real owner or owners of the attempted proceedings to get title to the land for nonpayment of taxes. The statute should not be construed so as to lead to a ridiculous result. It is claimed that because notice could not be served on Mary Carroll, deceased, that it became incumbent upon the county to serve the notice by publication of the same. Now, concededly, the purpose of publication is to give an owner notice. The argument of counsel is that actual written notice to an owner is insufficient if, perchance, such owner has not recorded his deed and, hence, is not the owner of record but that publication of notice in some paper would give the necessary notice. We think such reasoning is specious. The statute must be given a common-sense interpretation.
“This provision of the statute, it seems to the court, was inserted so that a county, or other person holding tax cer*101tificate, would not be rendered helpless if the owner was unknown or there was a dispute as to ownership. Hence the provision that it might be served on the owner of record in the register of deeds’ office. The purpose of it was undoubtedly to give notice to the actual owner or one of them. Would it not be rather ludicrous to hold that notwithstanding this actual notice to one of the owners and the occupant which had been given that yet it was necessary to publish the notice in the hope perchance that he would see it and thus have notice of the application ? The law is for all cases. The owner might well be a sole owner and it seems to the court that it is killing the spirit and magnifying the letter of the law to say that notwithstanding that proper written notice is served upon the admittedly legal owner that still, because he is not the owner of record, there must be publication.
“Plaintiff contends that the statute must be literally complied with. A strict construction means, as it seems to the court, that the construction must be such as to preserve every substantial right of the taxpayer as against the tax-collecting authority. It does not mean necessarily a literal construction, if it leads to a result that is ridiculous and preserves no real rights of the taxpayer that are not otherwise preserved to him.”
Sec. 75.12 (1), Stats. 1949, requires service on only one of the owners of record. Therefore, in the instant case, if any one of the heirs at law of Mary Carroll had gone into county court and obtained a certificate of heirship and recorded a certified copy in the office of the register of deeds, there would be no question about the county’s personal service of written notice on the plaintiff P. K. Carroll being binding on the other co-owners. To me it seems absurd that failure to procure or record such certificate of heirship would prevent the service on P. K. Carroll, as one of the actual owners, from being binding upon the other co-owners.