Kehlet v. Bergman (1912) · DecisionDepot

Kehlet v. Bergman

Name: California Superior Court Tentative Rulings
Creator: DecisionDepot
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

California Supreme Court Feb 8, 1912 No. L.A. No. 2754.Published

Before: Henshaw

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Holding. A tax collector is not required to search outside sources for a property owner's address, but is limited to inspecting assessment rolls from the date of the delinquent assessment to the last assessment before the sale. Furthermore, a property description is valid if it accurately identifies the land via a recorded map, even if the owner later acquired title using a different map description.

Issues

Whether a tax collector's failure to mail notice under Political Code section 3897 invalidates a tax deed when the owner's address was not on the assessment rolls.
Whether a tax assessment description is invalid if it references a recorded map that the property owner did not use in their own title description.

Disposition. reversed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“Section 3650 of the Political Code authorizes any “description sufficient to identify” the land.”

Synopsis

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County and from an order refusing a new trial. Charles Monroe, Judge.

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

HENSHAW, J.

This action is to quiet title. It is brought by plaintiffs claiming under a tax title from the state against defendants, owners of the land at the time the assessment for which the property was sold became delinquent. Judgment passed for defendants and from that judgment and from the order denying their motion for a new trial plaintiffs appeal.

The notice contemplated by section 3897 of the Political Code was not mailed, the deeds reciting that the addresses of

[218]

the owners were unknown. It is contended in support of the judgment that upon the authority of

Smith

Furlong,

160 Cal. 522, [117 Pac. 527], the failure to send this notice, the post-office addresses of the defendants being known, was fatal to the validity of the deed. The court made no specific finding upon the matter, but the following unquestioned facts are disclosed by the evidence: The delinquent assessment for which the property was sold was levied in 1896. Neither the assessment-roll for that year, nor for any succeeding year, down to and including the last assessment next before the sale, disclosed the residence or the “last known post-office address,” or, indeed, any address of the defendants. Defendants were permitted to show that earlier assessment-rolls showed addresses of the defendents or of their predecessors in interest, and that the residences of the defendants were given in the Los Angeles city directory during the year for which the lots were last assessed and the year just prior thereto. The contention upon this evidence is that the tax-collector was charged with notice, that in the exercise of the diligence required in the performance of his duties he should have resorted to these means of information, and that he should have searched the records of the assessor’s office to discover whether statements had been handed in to the assessor by the property-owners, and whether these statements contained the property-owners’ residences, and that his admitted failure so to do was an additional circumstance showing that he did not make use of the notice and of sources of information which were at hand and which it was his duty to inspect. This, however, is carrying the principle of

Kehlet v. Bergman

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Synopsis

HENSHAW, J.

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