Hebb v. Moore

Irving, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In the matter of the trust estate of Thomas R. Matthews pending in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, in equity, Henry J. Hebb, Treasurer of Baltimore County and Collector of State and County Taxes for Baltimore County, filed his petition alleging that all the State and county taxes since the year ISTT, remained due and unpaid, and praying an order of the Court directing the auditor, in stating his account in the cause, to allow the same with interest which had accrued. The Court, on the 21st of December, 1885, passed an order directing the allowance by the auditor of the taxes mentioned in the petition. On the 4th of January, 1886, the appellee, trustee in the cause, filed his petition asking a modification of the order so as to exclude therefrom all taxes which had accrued more than four years before the filing of Hebb’s petition, to which he pleaded the Statute of Limitations embodied in section 82 of the Act of 1814, chapter 483, which repealed and re-enacted Article 81 of the Code of General Public Laws of the State.

Hpon hearing, the Court adjudged that the Statute relied on was a complete bar to-allowance of the taxes for the years 1818, 1819, 1880 and 1881, and signed an order disallowing the taxes for those years. An auditor’s report was accordingly made in conformity with that order which was ratified, and this appeal is from the order of the Court disallowing the taxes mentioned, and from the order ratifying the audits made in accordance with the order of May the 15th, 1886. The sole question for decision is whether section 82 of the Act of 1814, chapter 483, operates as a bar to the allow ¹⁶⁹ anee of taxes in the distribution of the proceeds of a trust estate like the present. We think it does not.

The provision is as follows: “All taxes levied for county, or city purposes shall he collected hy the collectors of the counties or cities respectively, within four years after the same have been levied, and if the same shall not be collected within four years the parties from whom such taxes may be demanded, may plead this section in bar of any recovery of the same.” This section of the Code manifestly was intended to-apply only to such cases and such persons when the collector could, on notice, proceed summarily to sell the debtor’s property for jhe taxes; and whenever he could do so, and did not resort to his distress and sale, the statute was permitted to be pleaded as a bar, after the expiration of four years from the levy of such taxes. It was not intended and could not have been intended, to be a bar where the law would not allow the collector to resort to his legal remedies for summary enforcement of payment. In County Commissioners of Prince George’s County vs. Clarke & Berry, 36 Md., 218 , it was expressly decided, that when a Court of equity had taken jurisdiction of the property liable for taxes it was not admissible for a collector to step in and by his summary process “sell the property for taxes and transfer the jurisdiction over the title to another tribunal.” In all such cases the collector’s summary proceedings are, of necessity, suspended because the Court of equity has charge of the property. It is in custodia legis; and he must seek payment of his taxes from the funds under the Court’s