32 Vt. 769 | Vt. | 1860
This is an action of trespass for taking and carrying away a hugg'y wagon and a lumber wagon, belonging to the plaintiff, and the defendant justifies the trespass complained of on the ground that he, being the collector of taxes of school district No. 5 in Dover, took the property and disposed of the same under and by virtue of a rate bill and warrant for the collection of a certain tax assessed against the plaintiff on his list for his poll and personal property for the year 1854, in pursuance of a vote of said school district at a legal meeting held on the 17th of January, 1855. The facts in the case are agreed upon by the parties.
It is agreed that the plaintiff removed from said district, with his family and effects, to Winchester, New Hampshire, on the 28th of December, 1854, and was not an inhabitant of the district at the time said tax was voted, or at any subsequent time but was an inhabitant of the district on the first day of April preceding, when the list was taken, and no question is made but that the plaintiff was properly listed as an inhabitant of the district for the year 1854. Three days before the plaintiff’s removal from the district, the school house therein was destroyed by fire,- and on the 17th of January following, the district, at a legal' meeting duly warned for that purpose, voted “ to raise a sum not to exceed two hundred and fifty dollars, to defray the expenses of building and furnishing a school house ” in said district, and, during the summer of 1855 a school house was built and accepted by the district. The tax in question was assessed pursuant to this vote, and the plaintiff claims that it was illegally assessed, as against him, for various reasons.
I. It appears from the agreed statement of facts in this case, that the plaintiff had a list in the town of Dover for his poll and
II. The plaintiff claims that although he was an inhabitant of the district on the first day of the preceding April, and was properly listed therein in the list of the year 1854 for his poll and personal property, yet, as he removed from the State before the tax was voted, he was not liable, after such removal, to be taxed in that district on that list. It was held by this court in the case of Woodward v. French, 31 Vt. 337, that the reasonable construction of the existing statutes (Comp. Stat., p. 457, sec. 35, 36, and the acts of 1851 and 1854, above cited,) was that the list as taken on the first day of April should be a permanent list for each school district for the year, that each district might know its resources or basis of taxation in advance, and that a person who had been properly listed in a school district, still remained subject to taxation therein, upon such list, while it remained in force, even though he had subsequently removed from the district. That case is decisive against the plaintiff upon the point now under consideration ; and the liability of the plaintiff to taxation in that school district on the list of 1854 must be regarded as not being affected by his subsequent removal from the district while that list remained in force as a basis of-taxation.
III. The tax in question was assessed by the prudential committee on the 10th of December, 1855, under the said vote of the district, at the district meeting held on the 17th of January preceding, and it is urged by the plaintiff that as it appeared that the choice of school district officers in said district was made at an annual meeting held on the 15th of October, 1855, and as the time
IV. It is urged on the part of the plaintiff that the warrant for the collection of this tax was void because it did not specify any “ limited time ” within which the tax was to be collected and paid over to the prudential committee, agreeably to the provisions of the statute. (See Comp. Stat., p. 149, sec. 41 and 42, — p. 464, sec. 8, — and p. 616, form 23.) The warrant, in all other respects, appears to be regular and correct in form, and no other
Y. The warrant for the collection of this tax was attached to three tax bills which are connected together in a small book and separately certified. It requires the collector ‘‘ to collect of the several persons named in the lists herewith committed to you the sums of money annexed to the name of each person respectively, and pay the same to the prudential committee of said district.” The collector indorsed on the book containing said tax bills a memorandum as follows, viz: “ Nov. 12th, 1856, Received of James Lyman and M. P. Cooper, prudential committee in district No. 5, one tax bill for collection,” and subscribed the said memorandum; As it is made the duty of a collector of a-school district tax (Coni; Stat., p. 149, sec. 42,) to proceed in levying and collecting the tax in the same manner as is provided by law for collectors in collecting towm taxes, and as it is made the duty of the constable on receiving a tax bill to indorse thereon the true dale when he received the same, (Comp. Stat., p. 464, sec. 9,) the plaintiff insists that the indorsement made by the collector as aforesaid is by its terms applicable to only one tax bill; and as it does not specify to which of the three tax bills it was intended to be applicable, it ought not, on account of its uncertainty, to be
Our conclusion upon the whole case is, that the justification by the defendant of the trespass complained of, is complete, and that the plaintiff is not entitled to recover. The judgment of the county court in favor of the plaintiff is therefore reversed, and judgment is rendered, on the agreement of the parties, in favor of the defendant.