176 S.W.2d 707 | Ark. | 1944
This appeal involves the validity of a tax forfeiture.
Appellee, as plaintiff, filed suit in ejectment, claiming under a line of title from the record owner. Appellant, as defendant, claimed under a tax deed from the State, based on a tax forfeiture to the State in 1939 for the taxes of 1938. Tender was conceded by appellant, and there has been no confirmation of the State's title; so the *577 question is the validity of the forfeiture. The cause was tried before the circuit court, without a jury, on stipulated facts, from which we copy in part: "The plaintiff attacks the sale solely on the ground that the notice of sale was not in accordance with the provisions of 13847 of Pope's Digest of the statutes of Arkansas. The defendants contend that the sale of November 6, 1939, was valid, notwithstanding the fact that only eleven days intervened between the first publication of the notice and the sale."
The stipulation also provided that the collector of Randolph county "published notice of sale in the Pocahontas Star Herald on October 26, 1939, and on November 2, 1939. He sold the property on November 6, 1939, which was eleven days after the first publication of the notice on October 26, 1939."
The circuit court found the tax forfeiture to be void, and rendered judgment for appellee; and this appeal follows. Learned counsel for the appellant, in the splendid brief filed herein thus states the issue:
"The simple question for decision in this case on appeal . . . is whether the collector's tax sale was advertised in the manner and for the time required by law, and specifically in accordance with 13847 of Pope's Digest. . . . This court, in the case of Schuman v. Metropolitan Trust Company,
We are thus asked by appellant to overrule three cases of this court; and these cases are rules of property! *578 It is not necessary to consider what might be the views of the present members of the court, if the question here presented were a new one. The point is, that this court has previously decided this identical question in three cases, and these cases are ruling here, and we follow them.
What was said by Chief Justice McCULLOCH in Burel v. Grand Lodge, I. O. O. F.,
In Britt v. Harper,
The argument of the appellant about the impossibility of publication in some counties for 14 days before the sale is a matter that should be addressed to the legislature rather than the courts. And here we parenthetically observe that 13847 of Pope's Digest (the section in force at the time of the forfeiture here involved) was amended by 3 of Act 64 of 1941 to provide for publication "once each week for two weeks between the third Monday in October and the second Monday in November, *579 in each year, the first publication to be at least fourteen days before the day of the land sale. . . ."
The judgment of the circuit court is, in all things, affirmed.