Nickel v. State

WILBUR, J.

This is an appeal brought by the plaintiffs from judgment against them on demurrer. As authorized by section 18b, Statutes of 1913, page 1080, they brought suit against the state to quiet title as against the claims of the state to a lien for an inheritance tax upon certain shares of stock transferred to them by a trust agreement dated April 17,1913, and recorded October 20, 1916. The complaint alleges that the plaintiffs were grantees or beneficiaries of a transfer made by Henry Miller to them of 119,839.75 shares of stock in the Miller and Lux Company, a corporation. That on the fourteenth day of October, 1916, Miller died, leaving estate in the city and county of San Francisco. That he was a resident thereof at the time of his death, and that his estate had been probated in the superior court thereof. It is alleged that the plaintiffs were the .owners and holders of said stock; that the state was asserting a right to an inheritance tax thereon under and by virtue of the laws of 1911, 1913 and 1915; that each and every of these claims was without merit, and that the state had no interest in and to the stock in question and no lien thereon, and prayed that plaintiffs’ title thereto be quieted. Plaintiffs attached as an exhibit to the complaint the conveyance under which they claim title. The state demurred upon the ground that the complaint did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action, and that the court had no jurisdiction of the case.

The allegation of title on the part of plaintiffs and that the defendant’s claim to the property was without right would ordinarily be sufficient to require an answer on the part of the defendant setting up its title in and to the property in question. The state claims, however, that upon the facts alleged in the complaint and the terms of the conveyance under which plaintiffs claim, the complaint affirmatively shows that the state is entitled to an inheritance tax upon the property in question.

[128]

The law in force at the time of the transfer as alleged was the inheritance tax law of 1911, and that statute controls in determining whether or not there is a tax upon the transfer and the amount thereof.

(Hunt

v.

Wicht,