Benzinger v. Gies

Briscoe, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an action of ejectment brought by the appellant, Harry M.. Benzinger, administrator c. t. a. of Mary A. ⁷⁰⁷ Myers, to recover certain leasehold property situated in Baltimore City, and now in the possession of the appellee. The defendants assert title under a deed dated the 30th day of March, 1893, from Lewis N. Hopkins, Collector of Taxes of the city of Baltimore, made in pursuance of a sale of the property for taxes, due and in arrear for the years 1889 and 1890.

The deed and the tax sale proceedings are attacked by the appellant, and the questions here involved turn upon the deed and the sufficiency of this sale. There are two grounds of objection relied upon by the appellant to the validity of the deed, and the tax sale; first, because the Collector failed to give a legally sufficient notice of the sale, and secondly, because the description of the property given by the Collector in the advertisement of sale was defective, and was not according to the requirements of law, in that it failed to designate the property to be sold, with such certainty as identified it. If these objections are well taken they are fatal to the appellees’ case, and it will not be necessary for us to consider the other questions raised by the record. It has been too often decided by this Court to need but a passing notice, that the validity of tax sales depends on a substantial compliance on the part of the Collector with all the essential requirements of the statute.

The notice required by the statute is jurisdictional. Baumgardner v. Fowler, 82 Md. 631 . The power thus conferred being a special one, it must be executed in the manner directed by the statute. In the recent case of Richardson v. Simpson, 82 Md. 159 , it is distinctly said, the failure of the officer to give a proper notice of the sale, or his omission to advertise a sufficient description of the property intended to be sold, will deprive him of authority and jurisdiction to proceed at all, and will invalidate the deed which he subsequently makes even though the sale may have been ratified by the Court.

Now, in the case before us, the report of the Collector states, that thirty days prior to the proceedings bills setting ⁷⁰⁸ forth the amount of taxes due on the said property "and specifying the year or years for which such taxes were due, were delivered to Mary A. Myers at her residence, 1703 Lemon alley, in the city of Baltimore, the owner of such property; that upon each of such bills so delivered was printed a notice as follows: Notice printed on the tax bill for 1889. 'If this bill is not paid within thirty days from