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60 Pa. 46

Moore v. Marsh

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided February 23, 1869

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1869-02-23

<p>1. The warrant of a collector of taxes is not a lien on property before seizure.</p> <p>2. After taxes had been assessed the personal property of the tax-payer was sold by the sheriff; before its removal from the premises the collector seized and sold it for the taxes. Held, that he was liable to the purchasers in trespass.</p> <p>3. The purchasers were not occupiers of. the real estate and the property therefore was not within the Act of April 15th 1834, § 46 (Taxes).</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1869-02-23

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently January 1940

3 state decisions

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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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¶1The opinion of the court was delivered, by

Thompson, C. J.

¶2— Since the case of Parsons v. Allison, 5 Watts 72, and Baskin et al. v. Koontz & Hummell, Id. 76, it has never been supposed that a collector’s warrant is a lien on property for unpaid taxes, before actual seizure. These cases settle concluí sively that it is not, and that it is unlike a fi. fa. in this particular.

¶3*48In the case in hand, the collector had no lien when the sheriff levied on Longenecker’s property, about which this controversy has arisen.

¶4But it is claimed that because the purchaser at sheriff’s sale did not immediately remove the property from the premises, the collector was justified in levying on it under the 46th section of the Act of 15th April 1839, which authorizes collectors to levy on the goods and chattels liable to distress for taxes due on the real estate of the occupier of the same. But the property in- this instance was not the property of the occupier of the real estate. It belonged to the plaintiffs below as vendees of the sheriff. They were not occupiers of the real estate at all, and of all this the collector was notified. His distress and sale was a trespass on the plaintiffs’ property,- the right to immediate possession of which was in them by virtue of their legal title, and this was all that was. necessary in order to enable them to maintain trespass: 3 Harris 31; 10 Watts 463.

¶5Judgment affirmed.

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