Smith v. Krosschell

937 So. 2d 658, 2006 WL 2505993
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedAugust 31, 2006
DocketSC05-488
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 937 So. 2d 658 (Smith v. Krosschell) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Smith v. Krosschell, 937 So. 2d 658, 2006 WL 2505993 (Fla. 2006).

Opinion

937 So.2d 658 (2006)

Jim SMITH, etc., et al., Petitioners,
v.
Stephen KROSSCHELL, Respondent.

No. SC05-488.

Supreme Court of Florida.

August 31, 2006.

Charles J. Crist, Jr., Attorney General, Eric J. Taylor, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Mark T. Aliff, Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, FL, and Christina M. LeBlanc, Assistant County Attorney, *659 Pinellas County, Clearwater, FL, for Petitioner.

Stephen Krosschell, pro se, Tarpon Springs, FL.

LEWIS, C.J.

We have for review the decision in Smith v. Krosschell, 892 So.2d 1145 (Fla. 2d DCA 2005), in which the Second District Court of Appeal has certified conflict with the decision of the Third District Court of Appeal in Robbins v. Kornfield, 834 So.2d 955 (Fla. 3d DCA 2003). We have jurisdiction. See art. V, § 3(b)(4), Fla. Const. For the reasons expressed below, we quash the decision in Krosschell and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS BELOW

In 2000, Krosschell received homestead exemption status for the real property which has generated this litigation. During March of that year, a field inspection of the real property was conducted to verify the information in the records of the property appraiser (Smith). The property appraisal records were subsequently updated to reflect the inspection, but at that time a data entry error occurred. Although Krosschell's home on the real property encompassed 3,746 square feet of base living area, when the data was entered to update the records, the square foot base living area of the home was entered as zero (0). In effect, this data entry error effectively deleted Krosschell's entire dwelling from the property records as though the property was raw land without any improvements. Thus, due to this data error, Krosschell's property was undervalued by $100,100, and this valuation produced by the erroneous data was certified on the 2000 tax roll.

After the error was discovered, Smith issued a certificate of correction in an attempt to correct the error, but the statutory time requirements for notice to Krosschell to afford time for a challenge to the assessed value before the Value Adjustment Board (Board) could not be satisfied for the year 2000. The Board had already conducted proceedings for 2000, and Krosschell would have been unable to challenge the correct assessment until the Board convened again in 2001. Therefore, the original assessed value of $188,700 (i.e., the assessed value which did not include Krosschell's house) was reinstated for the year 2000.

In August 2001, Krosschell received a 2001 notice of proposed property taxes based on the correct data, which included the correct assessed value of $288,800 for the year 2000 (i.e., the assessment of Krosschell's property that included the previously eliminated improvement), and an assessed value of $297,400 for 2001. Krosschell appealed these values, but the Board concluded that Smith had acted properly in correcting the data and assessing the value of the property.

Krosschell proceeded to file a complaint in the circuit court. In a motion for summary judgment, he claimed that there had been a fifty-eight percent increase in the 2001 assessment over the 2000 assessment which violated the "Save Our Homes" tax cap in the Florida Constitution, a provision which permits increases of annual assessments of homesteaded property to be no more than three percent of the previous year's assessment. He asserted this position even though the initial 2000 assessment of his property was based on an error which excluded the existing structure. Krosschell further contended that section 197.122(1) of the Florida Statutes (2000), which authorized a property appraiser to correct "acts of omission or commission" at any time, was inapplicable in the instant proceeding, and the statute *660 that did apply, section 193.155 of the Florida Statutes (2000), did not allow for correction of the data entry error that occurred here.

Smith also filed a motion for summary judgment in which he argued that the erroneous assessment of Krosschell's property was a mistake of fact resulting from the data entry error that could be corrected. The circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of Krosschell, denied Smith's motion, and entered judgment which required Smith to appraise Krosschell's property at $188,700 for the year 2000 (i.e., the assessment value based on the data error without the existing home), concluding that this amount, even though based on a data entry error, established the base year just valuation for the property.

The Second District affirmed the summary judgment and concluded that Smith had no statutory authority on these facts to make a retroactive change in the base year assessment of Krosschell's homestead. See Krosschell, 892 So.2d at 1146. In support of its holding, the district court relied on Smith v. Welton, 729 So.2d 371 (Fla.1999), in which this Court held that on the facts presented there section 193.155(8)(a) of the Florida Statutes did not provide property appraisers the authority to make a retroactive change in the base year assessment of homesteaded property. See Krosschell, 892 So.2d at 1146. The Second District recognized that this statutory section had been amended in 2001 to allow property appraisers to make such a change; however, the court determined that the amendment applied only prospectively because there was no indication of legislative intent that it be applied retroactively. See id. at 1146-47. Concluding that all ambiguities in tax statutes are to be resolved in favor of the taxpayer, the Second District held that the 2000 version of the statute applied in the present case, and, therefore, Smith could not change the original assessed value of Krosschell's property. See id. at 1147.

The Second District certified direct conflict with Robbins v. Kornfield, 834 So.2d 955 (Fla. 3d DCA 2003), in which the Third District held that the same 2001 amendment to section 193.155 authorized property appraisers to retroactively correct errors in the calculation of the base year just value assessment of a property. See Kornfield, 834 So.2d at 957. This Court received oral argument in this case and subsequently ordered supplemental briefing from the parties to specifically address section 197.122 of the Florida Statutes, the statute that Krosschell claimed in his motion for summary judgment to be inapplicable in the present controversy.

ANALYSIS

After receiving supplemental briefing from the parties, we conclude that it is unnecessary in the instant case to resolve the issue of whether the 2001 amendment to section 193.155 applies retroactively. This conclusion is based on our determination that the decisions in Krosschell and Kornfield involve consideration of errors that are fundamentally different, and section 193.155(8)(a) of the Florida Statutes does not apply to the data entry error that occurred in the instant case.

A review of the conflict case, Kornfield, and the decision of this Court in Smith v. Welton, each of which interprets and applies section 193.155(8)(a), demonstrates that in each of these cases, a property appraiser underassessed some aspect of a homesteaded property. In Kornfield, the appraiser failed to consider a 1,610 square foot addition that had been made to the homesteaded property, and this addition escaped taxation for nine years. See 834 So.2d at 956. In Smith, a property appraiser *661

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
937 So. 2d 658, 2006 WL 2505993, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/smith-v-krosschell-fla-2006.