Duffy v. Peneguy

87 So. 25, 148 La. 407, 1920 La. LEXIS 1714
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedMay 31, 1920
DocketNo. 22848
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 87 So. 25 (Duffy v. Peneguy) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Duffy v. Peneguy, 87 So. 25, 148 La. 407, 1920 La. LEXIS 1714 (La. 1920).

Opinions

SOMMERVILLE, J.

Plaintiff sued Harry J. Peneguy, defendant and. appellant, to quiet a certain tax title acquired by him under the provisions of Act 101 of 1898, p. 127. Peneguy claimed to be the owner of the property in question at the time the suit was filed.

Plaintiff alleged that the sale hy which he acquired title was made by the sheriff and ex officio tax collector of the parish of St. Bernard for the taxes of the year 1914, assessed in the name of Xeter Realty, Limited; the tax sale having been made on June 26, 1915, and recorded in the conveyance records of St. Bernard parish on July 7, 1915. This suit was instituted more than 12 months after the sale.

Defendant answered, setting up the invalidity of the sale made to plaintiff or his author, and contended that the drainage taxes, which formed part of the taxes for which the property had been sold, were illegally levied. This contention was based upon two propositions: (1) That the land in question is marsh, and therefore a tax could not be levied at an election; and (2) want of benefits. *

Plaintiff offered in evidence two tax deeds by which he acquired title to the property described in his petition of date July 7, 1915, for the taxes of 1914, including the state, levee district, parish, state good roads, Confederate veterans, road and bridge, Bayou Terre-aux-Bceufs taxes, with interest and costs. He also offered in evidence an act of sale passed before Charles Schneidau, notary public, on July 23, 1914, which showed the purchase of the same property from Xeter Realty, Bimited, by defendant, Peneguy, and two acts of sale by the sheriff and ex officio tax collector for the parish of St. Bernard, showing that the Xeter Realty, Limited, had purchased the property in contest on June 28, 1913, for the taxes of 1912; the taxes being itemized as set forth above in the deeds of both plaintiff and defendant.

It would therefore appear that the title of Xeter Realty, Limited, the immediate author of defendant, is based on the same delinquent taxes as the sale to Frank J. Duffy, plaintiff, with the single exception that the sale was made to Xeter Realty, Limited, for the taxes of the year 1912, whereas plaintiff’s title is based on the taxes for the year 1914.

On the trial counsel for defendant offered evidence attacking the legality of the drainage taxes, upon which both plaintiff’s and defendant’s titles are partly based, because the property in contest had not received any benefits from the drainage district, which the board of drainage commissioners, duly authorized by the taxpayers and voters of the district, had undertaken to install. To the reception of such evidence counsel for plaintiff interposed the following objections:

“Counsel for plaintiff objects to the reception of the evidence for the purpose of proving paragraphs 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 of the answer (the other paragraphs having been abandoned) for the following reasons: '
“(1) Because the defendant has let go by the utile tempus within which he might have successfully urged defenses against the legality of the drainage taxes, and he cannot now [411]*411set up as a cause for annulling plaintiff’s executed tax title a collateral attack upon the drainage taxes, forming a part of the taxes to satisfy which sale was made.
“(2) Because, under no circumstances, is a collateral attack upon a tax levied by a subdivision of the state in strict conformity with the Constitution and laws of the state permissible. A tax so levied can only be contested in a direct proceeding against the authority levying it prior to a sale of the property (against which the tax is assessed) in enforcement of the tax. Where the property owner stands by, and after notice', permits his property to be sold to a third person, an objection to the legality or constitutionality of the tax cannot be entertained in a proceeding to set aside the tax sale, the owner being estopped by his conduct and acquiescence.
“(3) Because the defendant purchased said property from Neter Realty, Limited, and Xeter Realty, Limited, acquired the same at a tax sale made in satisfaction of the acreage taxes levied by the Bayou Terre-aux-Bceufs drainage district and other taxes, the said acreage tax, upon which plaintiff’s title is based, having been prior thereto authorized by the same authority and voted at the same election and levied by the same proceeding as was the acreage tax of the Bayou Terre-aux-Bceufs drainage district, upon which defendant’s tax title is based, and defendant is therefore estopped from contesting the legality or constitutionality of the said acreage taxes.
' “(4) Because, in the absence .of a charge of fraud or palpable abuse on the part of the legislative department in creating a taxing district, the judicial department of the government is without jurisdiction to review its finding of benefits to result from the levy of a forced contribution or special assessment for a public improvement throughout such district, which finding of benefits is to be found in the creation of a taxing district and the authorization to' levy the tax.”

It would appear from the record that either plaintiff had a valid title, or that both plaintiff and defendant are without title, because the attack made by the defendant on plaintiff’s title is just as applicable to his own as it is to that of plaintiff. Defendant here urges illegality of the tax by which plaintiff acquired title as a cause for setting aside 'the sale when his own title is based on a sale made for a different installment of the same debt or tax maturing in a different year. It would thus appear that he, as a purchaser of property, who had assumed as a part of the purchase price a series of mortgage notes imposed on the property, and in the face of his assumption, after having acquired the property, sought to repudiate the very debt forming the consideration of his purchase, for causes going to the validity or invalidity of the debt so assumed. Defendant appears to say:

“I bought this property for the installment of the bonds falling due in 1912, or for the taxes of that year. Since I purchased it another installment has fallen due which I neglected to pay. Now, because the whole debt, including all installments, is void and invalid, the plaintiff has no title to the property which ho Bought for the nonpayment of the installment which I neglected to pay.”

We must hold that defendant cannot attack his own title in such way. He is estopped from doing so by deed, as urged by plaintiff in his objections to the evidence.

[1] Counsel for defendant rely upon the' paragraphs of their petition, which, in substance, assert:

The tax sale is illegal because a part of the taxes for which it was made, although levied by a subdivision of the state of Louisiana, by authority of the Constitution and laws of the state, is illegal, for two reasons:

(1) Because the property has received no benefits from the special acreage tax of 16 cents per acre levied by the board of drainage commissioners of the Bayou Terre-aux-Bceufs drainage district for the year 1914, which tax has been funded into an issue of $500,000 of bonds, issued for the purpose of paying for a general system of drainage provided by said board of drainage commissioners.

(2) Because there was no power or authority vested in the board of drainage commissioners to levy a special acreage tax on prop

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Bluebook (online)
87 So. 25, 148 La. 407, 1920 La. LEXIS 1714, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/duffy-v-peneguy-la-1920.