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31 N.J.L. 288

State v. Murphy

Supreme Court of New Jersey

Decided June 15, 1865

Supreme Court of New Jersey · decided 1865-06-15

<p>When commissioners of appeal make an additional assessment, and assess-persons for property not owned by them at the time, such additional assessment will be set aside.</p>

Decided 1865-06-15

¶1The opinion of the court was delivered by

Haines, J.

¶2The prosecutors had been severally taxed for all the property, real and personal, held by them individually, and subject to such taxation, in the township of Alexandria, for the year 1862.

¶3On the 6th of December of that year, the commissioners of appeal made an addition to their assessments, and assessed them jointly for a house and lot, called a tavern property, situated at Frenchtown, which they had previously purchased subject to encumbrances, but which, on the 13th of September, 1862, had been sold for encumbrances and conveyed by a master in chancery to another party.

¶4Several objections are made to the assessment; the want, namely, of any complaint made to the commissioners of appeal, or of any notice in writing to the parties interested by the party complaining, or of any judgment rendered within ten days after the making of such complaint, as is required by the statute. Nix. Dig. 801, pl. 57.*

¶5Without stopping to consider these objections to the mode of proceeding by the commissioners of appeal, a sufficient and conclusive objection to the additional assessment is, *289that it was made upon property which, at the time, was neither owned nor occupied by the prosecutors. Had the opportunity been afforded, they could have shown to the commissioners of appeal, as they did to this court by proof taken under rule, that the property had been sold aud conveyed by a judicial sale to another person, and that the title had passed out of them nearly three months before the time when the additional assessment was made.

¶6The act provides that all personal and real estate within .this state, owned by individuals or by corporations, shall be liable to be taxed. But no one is to be taxed for property -which he neither owns nor occupies.

¶7Let the assessment be set aside.

¶8Elmer, J., concurred.

¶9Cited in State v. Hardin, 5 Vroom 81.

¶10Rev., p. 1149, § 56.

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