25 A.2d 308 | Pa. | 1942
In this action in ejectment plaintiffs' right to recover the land in dispute depends upon the validity of a treasurer's sale of real estate for delinquent taxes. The cause was tried by a judge without a jury. The trial judge held that the sale was valid and the court below dismissed exceptions and entered judgment for plaintiffs. Defendant appealed. The sole assignment of error is the dismissal of defendant's exceptions and the decree directing judgment for plaintiffs. We will therefore confine our attention strictly to the matters raised by the appellant's statement of the questions involved. Appellant asserts that the county treasurer's deeds conveyed no title because the lots were sold as unseated land, when they were in fact seated.
Four contiguous lots on a plan known as English Village in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, were sold separately as unseated land by the treasurer of Montgomery County on June 11, 1930, for delinquent county, township and school taxes due for the year 1928. After the deeds were acknowledged in open court and delivered, the grantees in those deeds conveyed the land to plaintiffs. On trial the defendant made proofs tending to show that the lots when assessed were in fact seated land and claimed that the treasurer's sales were *245 therefore invalid. The trial judge affirmed by the court in banc found as a fact that the lots were unseated. Defendant now asserts that the evidence will not sustain that finding. In our view of the case that question is not important as we are of the opinion that the Act of June 3, 1885, P. L. 71 (72 PS 5933)1 is controlling and requires an affirmance of the judgment. We might add that it appeared by the evidence, and was so found by the court, that "there was no personal property of any kind on any of the four lots that could have been seized in payment of the 1928 taxes."
Prior to the act of 1885 the sale of land as unseated when it was in fact seated, or the converse, passed no title:Hathaway v. Elsbree,
It was wise legislation. As the Commonwealth developed, the original reason for distinguishing between seated and unseated lands ceased to have much, if any, force. The distinction was highly technical and, as it raised a factual question, it was usually for the jury: Rosenburger v. Schull, 7 Watts 390;Stoetzel v. Jackson,
This brings us to the controlling question and the final one argued by appellant. Has the act of 1885 been repealed? Appellant contends that it is repealed either by the Act of May 21, 1913, P. L. 285, or by the Act of May 9, 1929, P. L. 1684. There is no specific repeal of the act of 1885 by either of those laws, but they each contain a general clause repealing all inconsistent acts or parts of acts.
Implied repeals are not favored by the law. "In order to give an act not covering the entire ground of an earlier one, nor clearly intended as a substitute for it the effect of repealing it, the implication of an intention to repeal must necessarily flow from the language used, disclosing a repugnancy between its provisions and those of the earlier law, so positive as to be irreconcilable by any fair, strict or liberal, construction of it, which would, without destroying its evident intent and meaning, find for it a reasonable field of operation, preserving, at the same time, the force of the earlier law, and construing both together in harmony with the whole course of legislation upon the subject": Endlich on Interpretation of Statutes, § 210.
The status of the act of 1885 will be better appreciated by a reference to pertinent legislation relating to the general subject. Prior to 1844 unseated lands only *247
were directly liable for unpaid taxes. By § 41 of the Act of April 29, 1844, P. L. 486 (
The appellant, in support of his argument for repeal, relies upon the principle now declared in § 91 of the Statutory Construction Act of May 28, 1937, P. L. 1019 (46 PS 591), that "whenever a law purports to be a revision of all laws upon a particular subject, or sets up a general or exclusive system covering the entire subject *248
matter of a former law and is intended as a substitute for such former law, such law shall be construed to repeal all former laws upon the same subject." It is our conclusion that the act of 1885 is not inconsistent with either the act of 1913 or the act of 1929, and that there is not a repeal by implication. At the time the act of 1885 was passed there were different procedures and requirements for the sale of seated and unseated lands just as there are at the present time. "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 declare that it should not be necessary or material to go behind the assessment and inquire into its correctness": Pittsburgh Hunt. Club v. Snyder, supra (p. 181). The act of 1885 no more conflicts with either of the later acts referred to than it did with the acts in force at the time it became effective. The same reasons which prompted the enactment of the earlier law apply with equal, if not greater, force to the situation under the later statutes. Neither of the new laws purports to be a revision of all the laws on the subject. They are not exclusive systems. The act of 1929 by § 15 specifically saves from repeal the Act of May 16, 1923, P. L. 207, an act which provides an optional method of collecting taxes by filing a lien, for proceedings on the lien leading to judgment, and for sale by the sheriff. The acts of 1913 and 1929 do not deal with unseated lands while the act of 1885 deals with both. We therefore now hold that the act of 1885 had not been repealed just as we held in effect in Hare v.South Penn Oil Co.,
The judgment of the court below is affirmed.