Schwarz v. County of Marin

DEVINE, P. J.

There are 198 plaintiffs in this action to recover taxes paid under protest for the tax year 1965-1966. They owned realty about Belvedere Lagoon. The board of supervisors, sitting as the board of equalization, denied their application for reduced assessments. The superior court granted summary judgment for respondents.

Appellants admit that the appraisals of market value of their properties as made by the assessor are correct. They contend that the ratio of assessed valuation to market valuation of their properties is higher than it should be when comparison is made with ratios of other properties of the same bracket of values, $50,000 to $249,999.99, in Marin County. This bracket was defined by the assessor as his “Value Group 3.” The separation of properties into value groups, the assessor testified, is intended mainly as a check on appraisal discipline because his appraisers are inclined to “undershoot” high luxury properties or big industrial properties, of which there are not many in the county.

The assessor asserted that the percentages presented by

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appellants were limited to an unduly small and selective sampling. He denied discrimination or unequalized valuation of appellants' properties, in light of all relevant factors. As one of the factors, he presented the ratio of assessed valuation to market valuation of all single family residences within the county and not only of all properties in the $50,000-$249,999.99 bracket. The example produced by the assessor is in a sense a wider base than that of value group 3. We say that this is wider “in a sense” because it presents for comparison the multitude of residences which are of a value under $50,000, the owners of which are entitled to have their assessments matched against those of appellants, even though the action was brought by appellants and the other owners are not named parties to it. In another sense, the comparison proposed by appellants is broader than the county-wide residence measurement: that is, the values to be considered, as proposed by appellants, are those of all properties, regardless of use, within the particular value group.

The test recognized by the law is a comparison of the ratio of the assessed valuations to the market valuations of the subject properties, on the one hand, with the ratio of the assessed valuations to the market valuations of