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133 Mich. 569

Semer v. Auditor General

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided June 30, 1903

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1903-06-30

Bill by John Semer against Perry F. Powers, auditor general, Edwin A. Wildey, commissioner of the State land office, and Tekla Engstrom Sundelius, to set aside a deed to the State of certain tax lands, and a homestead entry thereunder. From an order overruling a demurrer to the bill, defendants appeal.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Reversed · Decided 1903-06-30

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently October 1932

12 state decisions

501903191019201930decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Carpenter, J.

¶1(dissenting). I do not think the limitation of six months prescribed by section 131, Act No. 107, Pub. Acts 1899, applies in a case — like that before us —where the homesteader has no deed from the State, and *578is not entitled to such a deed. Against the views urged in this opinion it is contended that this construction of the section makes the limitation clause entirely inoperative, as, at the time the law took effect, no homesteader was entitled to a deed. There is force in this argument, but not sufficient force to authorize us to give a construction to the law which, in my judgment, its language clearly forbids. I think it clear from its language that the legislature, believing there were cases “where the land had been taken as a homestead as set forth in the last foregoing proviso” (viz., cases in which homesteaders had obtained or were entitled to have their deeds), enacted the legislation in question, giving to such homesteaders, and to them only, the benefit of this extraordinarily short statute of limitations. If I am right in these views, and if there was no such case as supposed by the legislature, it is clear that its misapprehension does not give the court authority to apply the law to some other case. See Woodward v. Watts, 2 El. & Black. 452; Reed's Appeal, 114 Pa. St. 452 (6 Atl. 910).

¶2I think the lower court was right in overruling the demurrer.

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