14 Wis. 618 | Wis. | 1861
jjy flie Court,
This is a proceeding in equity to restrain the execution of a deed of lands sold for taxes, to have the sale declared void and the certificate cancelled. The defendants made no answer, and upon the hearing in the court below the complaint was dismissed, and judgment perfected against the plaintiffs for costs. The cause comes here by appeal from that judgment. We are of opinion that the action was properly dismissed, though not for the reasons assigned by the circuit judge. Without inquiring into the correctness of the positions taken by the plaintiff’s counsel, but assuming them to be correct, and that the proceedings to levy the taxes, sell the lands, and execute the proposed deed, were as irregular as he claims them to have been, it seems to us that the plaintiffs have no standing in a court of equity, and that the relief which they ask was properly denied. The taxes of which they complain are those which should, by law, have been paid in 1855. They allege in their complaint, and their counsel insists, that they were regularly assessed against the land, and put into the roll and the treasurer’s warrant in that year, and that they were returned unpaid by the treasurer of the town to the treasurer of the county in conformity to law. After the return no further steps to collect them were taken, for
It appears on tbe face of tbe complaint, as well as by tbe proofs adduced, that tbe sum demanded for taxes is not only justly and equitably due upon tbe land, but that it is in point of fact less than i't would have been if tbe strictly legal course contended for tby counsel bad been pursued. In addition to this, the plaintiffs were not called upon to pay it until a year after it should have been in tbe public treasury. Tbe payment of taxes equitably and fairly assessed is a duty which every man is under tbe strongest legal and moral obligation to perform to tbe government which affords him protection in bis person and property. Grovernments cannot
Nor is this a new application of familiar principles of equity. The same rules were substantially applied by the court to a case of irregular taxation in Mills vs. Gleason, 11 Wis., 497. It was there observed that perhaps the only method of solving the difficulty between illegal and oppressive taxation on the one hand, and the danger of defeating entirely the collection -of the public revenue on the other, was to hold that no objection which did not go to the very ground work of the tax, so as to- effect materially its principle, and show that it must be necessarily illegal, ought to have the effect of rendering the tax invalid. See also Bank of Columbus vs. Hines, 3 Ohio St. R., 36, 49; Com’rs Lucas Co. vs. Hunt, 5 id., 448; Williams vs. Mayor of Detroit, 2 Gibbs (Mich.), 582; Hope vs. Sawyer, 14 Ill., 254. Where it appears that the established principle of taxation has been violated, and that actual injustice will ensue, or that the tax is levied for an unauthorized purpose, of course equity will, in proper cases, interfere to prevent the wrong, and so this court has held. For these reasons, the judgment of the circuit court is affirmed, with costs.