289 N.W. 538 | Neb. | 1939
This case challenges the validity of the tax scavenger proceedings discussed in Marker v. Scotts Bluff County, p. 360, post, 289 N. W. 534, with respect to another piece of real estate. Most of the questions raised are settled by that decision.
Plaintiff sued defendant Carpenter for specific performance of a contract to purchase the property involved. Car
In this case the property involved was purchased by plaintiff’s father, at the scavenger sale, on May 8, 1929, for the sum of $1, and a tax sale certificate was issued to him. No steps were ever taken to have the sale either vacated or confirmed, except that in November, 1932, the county treasurer, on his own motion and without notice to any of the parties, had the court enter an order authorizing him to cancel the taxes in question on his records, on the ground that they had been duly extinguished by the foreclosure proceedings. The tax sale certificate remained outstanding until March 15, 1939, when it was surrendered by the father to the county treasurer, with a letter stating, “I am sending you this Certificate of Tax Sale for cancelation under 77-2129 of the 1929 Statutes.” Section 77-2129 provides that, where a certificate has been returned by the holder and canceled, “such cancelation shall have the effect of a redemption from such tax sale.”
The situation does not have a particularly wholesome aspect, with the father and son, both of whom were delinquent in their taxes, purchasing each other’s properties, and with the county treasurer undertaking to place, a bid of $1 in the father’s behalf upon a piece of the son’s property, against which there existed $1,500 in taxes, without accumulated interest. But, even if the sale could be branded as collusive and fraudulent, it would still not be^ void, but merely voidable. A dollar has always been held to be a sufficient consideration in the eyes of the law to support a sale. This does not, of course, prevent the court, in scrutinizing a judicial sale, from taking into account the inadequacy of the sale price as one of the factors in determining whether the sale should be vacated or confirmed. But this matter, as well as any matters of conduct which may have tinged the sale, can only be considered by the court in a direct attack upon the sale proceedings. They cannot be raised in a collateral proceeding. In the absence of any attempt on the part of the county to vacate the sale in the scavenger proceedings, in the ten years that have elapsed, we must, for the purposes of this suit, accept it as valid.
It should perhaps be suggested, in connection with tax
The county raises one other point that requires consideration. It contends that the holder of a tax sale certificate cannot surrender it for cancelation, so as to give it the effect of a redemption, after the expiration of the time limited for the acquiring of title. It argues that the father’s failure to take title or to surrender his certificate before this right expired made the certificate a nullity. If the rights of a certificate-holder are to be deemed to have lapsed for all purposes, after the time has expired for acquiring title under the certificate (which we need not determine) , the lapse would have to be held to operate primarily in favor of the property owner and not of the government. But whether the rights under the certificate in such a situation might still be enforced as a lien by an independent foreclosure in equity, or whether they have wholly expired, there is nothing in the statute, in either event, that prevents their surrender at any time for the purpose of clearing the public records and of giving “the effect of a redemption from such sale.”
We are obliged to affirm the decree of the trial court.
Affirmed.