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142 Mich. 210

Tucker v. Van Winkle

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided December 4, 1905

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1905-12-04

<p>1. Taxation — Sales of Land — Notice to Redeem — Sufficiency.</p> <p>A notice of the sale of land for taxes served on the record owner pursuant to section 140 of the general tax law (§ 3959, 1 Comp. Laws) is ineffectual if it omits the name of the county and State.</p> <p>2. Same — Service—Part Owner.</p> <p>The service of a proper notice on one who claims an interest in the timber growing upon the land will not entitle a tax purchaser to possession as against the record owner who was served with a deficient notice.</p>

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““If the name of the State appeared, the township and range, which are given, would serve to define the land. As it is, the notice fails to show whether the lands are in Michigan or in any one of the many other States, where similar methods of survey have been followed. While the case cited [Williams v. Olson, 141 Mich. 580 ( 104 N. W. 1101 )] indicates that the statute is not to be construed and enforced technically, we are of the opinion that it should furnish means of identifying the land.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Heethuis v. Kerr

Relies on Williams v. Olson

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1905-12-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently June 1940

13 state decisions

4019051910192019301940decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Hooker, J.

¶1The petitioner holds the auditor general’s deed to the premises in question. He has filed his petition for a writ of assistance, that he may be put in possession of said lands. Defendants Van Winkle and Charles Montague are the grantees named in the last recorded deed in the regular chain of title to said lands, and' claim to be owners. William Bonifas claims to have an interest in the timber growing upon said land. The petition is opposed, upon the grounds that the notices served did not conform to the requirements of section 140 of the tax law *211(1 Comp. Laws, § 3959), and that proper proof of service was not made. Most of the questions raised have been decided in the recent case of Williams v. Olson, 141 Mich. 580, and need not be further alluded to.

¶2The notices served upon Van Winkle and Bonifas are deficient in the description of the lands; the county and State being omitted. If the name of the State appeared, the township and range, which are given, would serve to define the land. As it is, the notice fails to show whether the lands are in Michigan, or in any one of the many other States, where similar methods of survey have been followed. While the case cited indicates that the statute is not to be construed and enforced technically, we are of the opinion that it should furnish means of identifying the land. The notice to Montague contains the name of the State, hut that does not give petitioner the right to possession.

¶3The order of the circuit court is affirmed, with costs.

Grant, Blair, Montgomery, and Ostrander, JJ., concurred.
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