Byrd v. Day

Stockbridge, J., delivered the opinion of the court. The record in the present case presents but a single question and that is within a, very narrow compass. The Circuit Court for Montgomery County sustained exceptions to and set aside a sale made in the foreclosure of a mortgage. The ground of the exceptions was the inadequacy of notice given of a tax sale which had occurred a number of years before.

This tax sale had been made under the provisions of the local laws for Montgomery County as enacted by Chapter 102 of the Acts of 1900. The sale made by the collector of taxes, was duly reported to and ratified by the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, and two years later a deed for the property was made to the purchaser at the tax sale. By the Act of 1900, referred to, it was provided as a prerequisite to such sales that notice should be given in at least two newspapers printed in Rockville for four successive weeks prior to the second Monday in March. It appears that notice of the tax sale now called in question was published in two newspapers printed in Rockville on the 16th and 23rd days of February, the 2nd and 9th days of March, 1906, and that the second Monday in March in that year was on the 12th of the month. ⁴⁴⁴ While there was thus a publication in four different weeks, the notice did not give four dear weeks of notice of the sale.

On behalf of the trustee the argument is one which seeks to split the time up by number of days, disregarding the clear intent of the Act, which looked only to weeks as the smallest sub-division of time. In the ease of Hewitt v. Parsley, 101 Md. 206 , it was announced by this Court as law that a person would not be compelled to' take a title to land derived from a tax sale in the absence of judicial ratification of the sale after1 notice, and that a sale would be set aside which is not in substantial conformity with the provisions of the statute in pursuance of which it is made. A similar ground of defense to that urged by the appellant in this case was sought to be invoked in Baltimore & Drum Point Railroad v. Pumphrey, 74 Md. 87 , where the word used was month, and the endeavor was to have that construed as gratified by interpreting it as the lunar month rather than solar month, but this contention was not sustained by the court. S'o also was