94 Mo. 158 | Mo. | 1887
This suit is by ejectment to recover the possession of a certain lot of land in St. Louis county. The petition on which the case was tried, besides being in the usual form adopted in bringing an ejectment suit, set up a tax title, and based plaintiffs’ right to recover
The deed shows upon its face that it includes six different tracts of land assessed to different persons, with the amount of the tax and judgment rendered against each tract. While it shows this, it fails to show that these tracts were each sold separately for the tax adjudged against it, and no other inference can be drawn from the deed, than that all the tracts were sold together for the aggregate amount of tax, interest, cost, and penalty, against all the tracts. While it is provided by our statute that a purchaser may have as many tracts as he buys at a tax sale included in one deed, it also provides that each tract is only chargeable with the tax assessed against it. When more than one tract is included in the deed it should show, either expressly or by necessary implication, the sale of each tract separately for its own tax. For the reason, if for no other, that the deed does not show this, the court was justified in holding it to be invalid.
The land in question was sold for the tax of 1875, assessed against it, and the proceedings against it were-had under the revenue law of 1872, by the two hundred and nineteenth section of which (2 W. S., p. 1206), it is-
' While the trial court, after holding the tax deed to be. insufficient, adjudged that plaintiffs might recover the amount of tax paid with ten per cent, interest and cost, and declared it to be a lien on the land in dispute, it refused to include in the judgment the amount necessary to redeem the land as provided, and it is this refusal of which plaintiffs complain. This complaint seems to be well founded and no reason is perceived why the court should have stopped, in its judgment, short of giving plaintiffs judgment for the amount necessary to redeem the land from tax sale, as provided in section 208, 2 Wagner’s Statutes, p. 1202. In the case of While v. Shell, 84 Mo. 569, it is held that, when no title passes to' the tax purchaser because of the failure of the officers to comply with the law governing sales of land for taxes, and the holder of the tax deed is defeated in an action of ejectment, he is entitled to recover the taxes paid as provided in section 219, 2 Wagner’s Statutes, p. 1206.
Judgment reversed and cause remanded,