78 N.J.L. 302 | N.J. | 1909
The opinion of the court was delivered by
The assessor of the borough of Kenilworth having made his assessment, presented his duplicate in due time to the county board for revision and correction. That board, in conjunction with the mayor of ihe borough, the assessor and other borough officials, conferred and the assessment was agreed upon as correct. Thereafter a number of taxpayers, feeling themselves aggrieved by assessments against their properties, appealed to the county board for reductions, but before any action had been taken by that board the same appellants presented their claims to the state board of equalization of taxes, and succeeded, with the consent of the borough, according to the record here presented, and without any notice to the county board, in obtaining extensive and radical reductions. Thus:
Mary L. Ash, whose real estate was assessed at $1,800, was reduced to $180.
Edward A. Lee, assessed at $1,750, reduced to $1,000.
John K. Jackson, assessed at $1,000, reduced to $300.
John T. Kanane, assessed at $1,600, reduced to $500.
Charles Frost, assessed at $1,800, reduced to $3,500.
Kenilworth Realty Corporation, assessed at $433,462, reduced to $183,832.
William McLean, assessed at $13,270, reduced to $6,300.
The effect of these reductions, aggregating over $270,000, was to reduce the original taxable assessment of real estate, as compiled by the borough assessor and confirmed by the county board, by about one-third. Having thus practically given away its assets, and Lear like divided its kingdom, it
When, by consent of parties, the matter has been settled without the intervention of fraud or other nullifying element, it has been uniformly held that the maxim, Consensus tollif errorem, applies, and precludes further controversy, because Interest Beipublica ut sit finis lili-um. Br. Leg. Max. 129. The act of 1905 creating the state board (Pamph. L., p. 123), and treating of a cognate subject, must be read in pari materia with the act of 1906, which by its seventh section limits the power of review by the state board to a “taxpayer feeling himself aggrieved” or to a “taxing district aggrieved by the action of the county board.” It is not perceived how this borough can bring itself within the manifest meaning of
It is not necessary for the purpose of this adjudication to discuss the legality of the action of the state board in acting in the first instance upon the appeals which were pending undetermined before the county board. But we find no legislation applicable to either of these boards which authorizes such procedure. Hot even the consent of the borough, as given in this instance, can suffice to confer jurisdiction upon a statutory tribunal erected as was this for a specific purpose with limited powers. Cregar v. Lebanon, 41 Vroom 598; Cooley Const. Lim. 199.
On the contrary, it is plain that the legislative intent was to confer upon the county board the power of hearing the appeal of the taxpayer or the taxpaying district in the first instance, and finally to authorize an appeal to the state board from the determination of the county board. Pamph. L. 1906, §§ 9, 10; Pamph. L. 1905, ubi supra, § 7.
Such power to hear appeals, in the first instance, was held by this court not to inhere in the state board of taxation, the predecessor of the present state board, and it is not apparent that the existing legislation has worked any change in that respect. Cregar v. Lebanon, supra.
As was said by this court in Colonial Trust Co. v. Scheffey, ubi supra: “The legislative policy in the creation of these tribunals can be sustained by the courts and the public expense involved therein justified only by our refusing to allow discretionary writs, for the sole purpose of reviewing tax valuations where no legal principle is at stake.”
For these reasons we conclude that the writ should be dismissed, with costs.