Gottstein v. Gray

SHINN, J.

In this action to quiet title, judgment was in favor of certain defendants on their cross-complaint and plaintiff: was held to have no right, title or interest in or to the real property in question, consisting of 80 feet of land in Seaside Park, Los Angeles County. Plaintiff appeals.

Defendants and respondents are the owners of the property, and the judgment should be affirmed if, as the trial court held, the tax deed under which plaintiff claims title is invalid. Plaintiff’s title depends not alone upon the validity of the proceedings leading up to and including the issuance of the tax deed, which are conceded to have been irregular and defective, but also upon the effect of a validating act (Stats. 1943, chap. 458; Deering’s Gen. Laws, 1943, Act 8443). The act reads in part as follows: “Every act and proceeding heretofore taken by any county, city and county or the officers thereof relative to the preparation, transmitting, computing, determining or fixing the budget or the tax rate or rates of any county or city and county, or to the assessment or equalization of property or to the levy of taxes thereon or to tax sales or certificates of tax sales, tax deeds or other conveyances resulting from such assessment, equalization and levy, are hereby confirmed, validated and declared legally effective.” Other provisions of the act limit its operation to the correction of so-called nonjurisdietional defects, irregularities and errors which might be validated under constitutional principles.

In the proceedings of the board of supervisors to fix;

[589]

the tax rate for Los Angeles Comity for the tax year ending June 30, 1929, which was governed by the total amount to be raised, including an amount for delinquencies, the board did not take into consideration the revenue to be raised by the tax on unsecured personal property subject to taxation for that year in fixing the rate on all of the property in the county subject to tax at the rate fixed. At the time of the levy in question, the rate on notes, debentures, shares of capital stock, bonds, solvent credits arid mortgages or deeds of trust was 1.45 per cent of the full cash value thereof, as fixed by section 3627a of the Political Code (Stats. 1927, chap. 223), under authority conferred by article XIII, section 12% of the Constitution, adopted November 4, 1924. Under section' 9a of the same article, adopted on the same day, taxes on personal property not secured by real estate for any current year were required to be based upon the tax rate levied upon real property for the preceding year. It was the duty of the board, under section 3714 of the Political Code (Stats. 1927, chap. 435), to adopt a budget of all county expenses, fixing the amount of all appropriations as approved by the board, and to “fix the rate of county taxes designating the number of cents levied for each fund upon each one hundred dollars of assessed value of the county, to raise the amount of the estimated expenditures as finally determined, less the total of the estimated revenues from sources other than taxation . . . and the tax for county and local purposes shall not exceed the amount specified in the budget, after allowing for delinquency as provided by law . . . . ” The budget was duly adopted and it included an allowance for delinquencies. It was not within the discretion of the board, in determining the amount to be raised and the rate necessary to produce the amount, to disregard revenue to be derived from taxes on unsecured personal property. It is obvious that a rate which would produce an amount that exceeded the budget requirements by the amount of revenue to be derived from the tax on unsecured personal property would be excessive to that extent. The amount of this excess would have been uniform and the burden would have been borne equally if all classes of property had been affected proportionately by the excessive rate. This was not the ease, as the rates on the classes specified in section 3627a of the Political Code and article XIII, section 9a of the Constitution were fixed by law and the entire burden of the