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70 Vt. 223

Thomas v. Leland

Supreme Court of Vermont

Decided October 15, 1897

Supreme Court of Vermont · decided 1897-10-15

Trustee Process for the collection of a tax, claimed to be dne from the defendant to the town of Salisbury of which the plaintiff is collector. Upon the report of a referee at the December Term, 1896, Addison County, Tyler, J., presiding, a pro-forma judgment was rendered for the defendant, and the plaintiff excepted. The defendant, claiming to be a non-resident, returned an inventory containing her real estate only.

Relies on Brush v. Buker

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1897-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently September 1981

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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Taft, J.

¶1There is one fatal objection to a recovery by the plaintiff. The inventory made by the defendant in the year in question was rejected by the listers, and never filed in the clerk’s office. After its rejection they proceeded to ascertain, as best they could, the amount of defendant’s taxable property. They ascertained that she had debts due her amounting to eight thousand dollars, and made her list accordingly. It does not appear that the appraised value of her property was doubled, as required by the statute. Whether it was so done or not is immaterial, for whatever mode was pursued, it was the duty of the listers under V. S. § 425, to give the defendant a written notice, notifying her of the making of the list, on or before the first day of May of that year, or by leaving such notice at her last and usual place of abode, if a resident. Such notice was not so left until a day or two after the first day of May. The statutory provision made for notice is mandatory; a strict compliance with it in all essential particulars is a condition precedent to a valid list. As some writers say, a day too late renders the assessment void. The notification in the manner provided by the statute, after the first day of May was null. The provision requiring it to be left on or before that day was a condition precedent to a valid list, and that provision of the statute not having been complied with, the assessment was invalid and the tax cannot be collected. The making of the inventory and returning it was not a substitute for the notice required by the statute. Brush v. Buker, 56 Vt. 143.

¶2*225It is unnecessary to notice tbe other question discussed, as there can be no recovery by the plaintiff in any aspect of the case.

¶3The pro-forma judgment is affirmed.

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