Champ Et Ux. v. Stewart Et Ux.

208 P.2d 454, 186 Or. 656, 1949 Ore. LEXIS 179
CourtOregon Supreme Court
DecidedMay 25, 1949
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 208 P.2d 454 (Champ Et Ux. v. Stewart Et Ux.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Oregon Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Champ Et Ux. v. Stewart Et Ux., 208 P.2d 454, 186 Or. 656, 1949 Ore. LEXIS 179 (Or. 1949).

Opinion

ROSSMAN, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment rendered by the Circuit Court in favor of the plaintiffs, based upon findings of fact and conclusions of law. The nature of the action was ejectment. The plaintiffs, as well as the defendants, are husband and wife.

The property is thus described in the attacked judgment:

“All of Blocks numbered 1 and 3, and Lots 2 and 10, inclusive, in Block No. 2 in the town of Minto, Marion County, Oregon, according to the recorded plat thereof on file in the office of the County Recorder of Marion County, Oregon. Also *658 all of the south half of the southeast quarter S 1/2 of SE 1/4) of Section Twenty-five (25) Township Nine (9) South, Range Three (3) East of the Willamette Meridian in Marion County, Oregon. Saving and excepting therefrom a strip of land thirty (30) feet in width on each side of the center line of the Willamette Valley and Coast Railroad Co. (now known as the Corvallis and Eastern Railroad Co.) as described in deed recorded in Vol. 49, pages 347 and 348 of the Deed Records for Marion County, Oregon.”

The respondents (plaintiffs) base their claim of ownership upon a deed of conveyance which Marion County delivered to them. The consideration was $300.00. Marion County obtained title, in the event the proceedings preliminary thereto were regular, by the foreclosure of the lien of taxes which became delinquent in 1931. The foreclosure proceeding was of the omnibus type (see § 110-905, O. C. L. A.) and included all properties upon the 1939 foreclosure list of that county. The appellants (defendants) have no muniments of title. Their title, in the event they have any, rests upon a claim of adverse possession.

The appellants present the following assignments of error:

1. “The description of the real property as set forth in the assessment roll and the foreclosure list is insufficient to give the court jurisdiction of the property described in the complaint.”
2. “The Court erred in admitting in evidence the record and files of the 1939 foreclosure proceeding as a muniment of title in plaintiffs.”

We shall now consider the second assignment of error. In its support, the appellants argue:

“The tax foreclosure proceeding being in rem, the process by which the court could acquire juris *659 diction over the property described in the complaint must run in the name of the State of Oregon.”

They rely upon § 10-601, O. C. L. A., which provides that “all process * * * issued by any court or officer thereof, shall run in the name of the State of Oregon.”

Section 110-901, O. C. L. A., says:

“Notice of each foreclosure proceeding, except as otherwise provided herein, shall be given exclusively by four weekly publications of said foreclosure list in some newspaper of general circulation * * *. The publication of such notice shall be sufficient service on each and every person interested in any of said properties * *

Thus it is seen that a summons is not employed in the foreclosure of the lien of delinquent taxes. A notice is the means whereby jurisdiction is acquired. The foreclosure proceeding, according to §110-905, is “in rem against the property itself.” The county is the proper party plaintiff: § 110-905, O. C. L. A. The tax foreclosure proceeding was entitled “Marion County, a political subdivision of the State of Oregon, plaintiff, v. Isaac Crader * * *, defendants.”

The published item which constitutes the notice and subjects the property to the court’s jurisdiction, as is evident from the section of our laws just quoted, is a document entitled Foreclosure List. Section 110-902, which requires the tax collector, that is, the sheriff, to prepare the foreclosure list, says that the list

“shall contain the names of the several persons appearing in the latest tax roll as the respective owners of tax delinquent properties, a description of each such property as the same appears in said latest tax roll, the year or years for which taxes are delinquent on each property, together with *660 the principal amount of the delinquent taxes of each year and the amount of accrued and accruing interest thereon * *

Obviously, the list must be over the tax collector’s authenticating signature. The publication of the list becomes the notice to the delinquent taxpayers. Section 110-903 says that “on the day which is six months after the day of delinquency of taxes of the latest year, the tax collector, with the assistance of the district attorney, shall institute proceedings to foreclose” the properties upon the foreclosure list. Thus the foreclosure is begun by the filing of the complaint and the publication of the foreclosure list. Any property owner who finds his property entered upon the published foreclosure list is notified thereby that the machinery of the law is grinding away toward a decree which will affect his property, and that if he wishes to save it from the impending fate he must now come forth with his defenses, if he has any.

Frederick v. Douglas County, 176 Or. 54, 155 P. 2d 925, sustained the validity of the procedure of which we have taken notice and, referring to § 110-904, O. C. L. A., being the section which renders publication of the foreclosure list notice to the delinquents, said:

“It is clear that the fundamental requisites of jurisdiction as imposed by constitutional mandate were present in the case at bar.”

Accordingly, we see that the notice for which § 110-904 makes provision consists of publication of the foreclosure list. The latter, as we have pointed out, embraces the sheriff’s signature, the sheriff being the tax collector. We think that in making these provisions, the legislature did not intend to subject the notice to *661 the requirements of § 10-601, O. C. L. A. To have styled the foreclosure list “in the name of the State of Oregon” would have been foreign to its nature and, in fact, untruthful. We hold the first assignment of error lacking in merit.

We come now to the remaining assignment of error. By reverting to it, it is seen that it challenges the description of the real property which was set forth in the assessment roll and in the foreclosure list. The assessment roll is not before us but, as is evident from our analysis of the first assignment of error, there is before us the foreclosure list. The respondents, in establishing their title, went back no further than the foreclosure proceedings. They presented to the Circuit Court the following documents: the 1939 foreclosure list of Marion County; the complaint which the county filed in the foreclosure proceedings; the motion for an order of default; the judgment and decree; the deed of the sheriff to Marion County; the resolution by the County Court of Marion County authorizing the sale of the property to the respondents; and the deed of Marion County to the respondents.

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Bluebook (online)
208 P.2d 454, 186 Or. 656, 1949 Ore. LEXIS 179, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/champ-et-ux-v-stewart-et-ux-or-1949.