51 Pa. Super. 174 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1912
Opinion by
When in 1894 the present plaintiffs bought the tract of land in dispute it was undoubtedly seated land. There were situate thereon a log house, barn and other buildings. A portion of the land had been cleared, fenced and put under cultivation. It was then and continued to be, down to and including the year 1900, regularly assessed as seated land, and the taxes levied were all paid by the owners until the present dispute arose as to the road tax for the year 1900. In that year, as in all the preceding years, the land was regularly assessed as seated land in the seated land list. It was therefore the duty of the county commissioners, the township school board, and the township supervisors to levy, under the said assessment, the various taxes which by law they were respectively authorized and required to levy and then to turn over to the township collector the various duplicates with the necessary warrants to empower him to proceed to collect the various taxes.
This record presents no question concerning any other tax for that year except the road tax. It does appear that the supervisors of the township had levied against this property in the name of the rightful owner a road tax of $1.50. John Scott, the then supervisor, either by mistake or in ignorance of his proper function, returned this tract of land as unseated land to the county treasurer because the road tax had not been paid to him. After the necessary period of time had elapsed the treasurer advertised for sale this tract of land, along with others, in the regular list of the unseated lands of the township and, at the sale that followed, sold it to the predecessor in title of the defendant who got into possession. The plaintiffs then brought this action of ejectment and on the trial the learned judge below directed a verdict for the plaintiffs upon which judgment was afterwards entered and this appeal followed.
It developed on the trial that the plaintiffs were a number of men, largely if not entirely engaged in the
■ It having thus appeared that the proper taxing power had determined for the year 1900, as well as in the preceding years, that this tract of land was seated land; that the owners acquiesced in the correctness of this determination; that it had never been assessed within the time covered by this record, as unseated land, and had not been so assessed for the year 1900, we think the learned trial judge was right in determining that it was not competent for the jury, on the trial of this case, to reach a conclusion different from the one arrived at by the assessor in whom was lodged the power and the duty of determining, at least in the first instance, the character of the land to be taxed as seated or unseated.
The act of the supervisor in returning to the treasurer this tract as unseated was wholly without warrant and equally without effect in changing its character. The land being therefore in fact and in law seated, a sale of it by the county treasurer as unseated, based merely on the
From the very beginning our law has clearly distinguished between seated and unseated lands-and by various statutes provided for the assessment and levy of taxes and their subsequent collection by different methods of procedure according as the land affected was in the one class or the other. It was, however, always recognized, both as a fact and a legal principle, that land once seated might thereafter become again unseated. The resident
By the act of June 3, 1885, the legislature declared, “That all sales of seated or unseated lands within this Commonwealth which shall hereafter be made for arrearages of taxes due thereon, shall be held, deemed and taken to be valid and effective irrespective of the fact whether such lands were seated or unseated at the time of the assessment of such taxes,” etc. It is urged upon us that, under a proper construction of this act, although the tract of land now in dispute was in fact seated, was so officially declared to be by the assessor who assessed it in the seated list, and so recognized by the owners who, from year to year, had paid their taxes following such assessments; the sale by the treasurer of. this tract as unseated, based only on the return of the supervisor, would divest the title of the real owners and pass it to the purchaser at that sale. Such a construction of the act we are unable to adopt. The policy of the state to distinguish between the two classes into which the lands of the commonwealth naturally were divided, to provide entirely separate methods of procedure to enforce the payment of taxes assessed and levied upon the respective classes, had become part of the common knowledge and understanding of the people. It was not the purpose of the act of 1885 to unify the two classes or abolish the existing procedure to be followed in each case. The act furnished no new system of procedure. As in each of the old systems the assessment had been the first important step, the purpose of the new statute was to
The plaintiffs’ tract of land then, so far as this record shows, having been assessed as seated land, was fixed with that character for the payment at least of the county and school taxes which might be levied against it and they would be payable to the tax collector of the township. Is it possible that under these circumstances the supervisor could determine for himself that this tract of land was unseated as to the road taxes and return it to the
Having determined that the learned court below was right in his view that he was dealing with a seated tract of land, it follows that any limitation prescribed in the acts of April 3,1804,4 Sm. Laws 201, and March 13,1815, 6 Sm. Laws 299, relating exclusively to unseated lands, cannot be successfully invoked as a defense in this action: Simpson v. Meyers, 197 Pa. 522.
Judgment affirmed.