County Commissioners v. Winand

McSherry, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellee filed a petition in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, against the County Commissioners of that county, praying that a mandamus might be issued commanding the respondents to strike from the tax books an assessment made by them in eighteen hundred and ninety, of certain personal property alleged to belong to the petitioner. An answer was filed, to which, ultitimately, a demurrer was interposed, and after a hearing, the demurrer was sustained, and the writ was ordered to be issued as prayed. From that order this appeal was-taken.

It appears by those averments of the petition which are not denied by the answer, and by the statements of the answer which are admitted by the demurrer, that the appellee had prior to 1890 been assessed with some real and personal property; that in the year named, his assessment was increased by the addition of six hundred barrels of whiskey, valued at twenty dollars per barrel, and aggregating twelve thousand dollars; that this increase was made without notice to him, but that he was subsequently required “to render an account of all the personal property in his possession, and that he was returned assessed for the year 1890 with an additional assessment of six hundred barrels of whiskey, valued at twenty dollars per barrel.” The answer of the County Commissioners proceeds to state, “that the petitioner, ⁵²⁴ in pursuance of said notice, appeared before the Board of County Commissioners, and did not deny that so much as six hundred barrels of whiskey was then in his possession, but disavowed the ownership of the same. That when interrogated on oath as to the real ownership of said whiskey, the petitioner refused to answer or give information touching the same, and these respondents therefore declined the application of the petitioner to abate the said assessment, and ordered the same to stand against him.” Prom these facts it is perfectly manifest that the additional assessment was improvidently made. The County Commissioners are clothed by the statute law of the State with ample powers to assess acquisitions of property, and to re-value that previously assessed. Code, Art. 81, secs. 18, 137, 145.

But notice to the owner affording him an opportunity to be heard before his property is valued, is indispensably necessary to the validity of an assessment. This has been so recently and explicitly decided by this Court, that it is only necessary to refer to those decisions, without repeating the reasons which support them. County Commissioners of Alleghany County vs. New York Mining Co., 76 Md., 549 ; County Comm’rs of Alleghany Co. vs. Union Mining Co., 61 Md., 545 . Obviously, then, an assessment made without a preliminary notice having been given, and therefore erroneously made, cannot be treated as regular because the tax-payer subsequently applies for a correction — he having appeared in consequence of information that he had been assessed, and not because of a notice that he would be assessed.

The answer from which we have quoted clearly shows that the assessment had been made before the appellee was notified, and that, upon his refusal to disclose the name of the owner of the property so valued and assessed to him, the County Commissioners declined to abate the assessment. They continued it on the tax- ⁵²⁵ Looks in Ins name, not because he was the owner, or because they had any evidence that he was the owner, but because he refused