84 Ala. 236 | Ala. | 1887
If the proceedings, under which the plaintiff ’s tax title was acquired, were regular, and in conformity to the statute regulating the sale of lands for payment of delinquent taxes, in force when the sale was made, he was plainly entitled to recover in the present action, which is one of ejectment.
The chief contention upon the trial related to the admission in evidence of the docket or book of the tax-collector, which he is required by law to deliver into the office of the probate judge, properly verified by his affidavit in the mode required by section 12 of the Act of February 12, 1879, the law in force at the time of the sale. — Acts 1878-79, pp. 1-8.
The plaintiff introduced in evidence, against the defendant’s objection, a substantially bound book, which the probate judge testified was the docket or book that had been prepared by the tax-collector and delivered by him, into the probate office by March 1st, 1881, as required by law, and that it was the only docket or book kept by either himself or the collector.
The statute seems to contemplate that two books of record shall be prepared and kept — one by the tax-collector, and the other by the probate judge.
The following are the essential requisites of the tax-collector's docket, which he is required to prepare and deliver into the office of the probate judge by the first of March of each year, or, which the judge shall cause to be prepared at the collector’s expense, if he fail in this duty: (1) It must be a substantially bound book prepared in tbe usual form of a docket; (2) it must contain a description of each parcel of land in the county, as it is assessed, upon which the taxes are unpaid; (3) the name of the owner, if known, or that it is assessed as the property of “unknown owner;” (4) The amount of unpaid taxes and charges due by the known owner, or due on tlie particular land, if assessed to an unknown owner; (5) these descriptions are required to be entered by “beats of the residence” of the owners, and “in alphabetical order” as to names; but if the owner is unknown, or a non-resident, then in the beat where the land is situated. Acts 1878-79, pp. 3-4;. Code, 1886, § 567.
There is a further provision that this docket, besides being in a regular and legible handwriting, without erasures and interlineations, shall be prepared “with sufficient space to make the entries hereafter required [in subsequent sections of the act].” — Acts 1878-79, p. 4, sec. 2. These entries refer obviously to tlie notice required by section 3, and the decree of sale, the full form of which is given in section 4, and perhaps some other parts of*the history of the ease.
For tbe error above pointed out tbe judgment is reversed and tbe cause remanded.