Montgomery v. Cowlitz County

Citations

• 14 Wash. 230
• 44 P. 259
• 1896 Wash. LEXIS 345

Syllabus

<p>TAXES — INVOLUNTARY PAYMENT — RECOVERY — CLOUD ON TITLE — ES-TOPPEL.</p> <p>Under Code 1881, § 2937, providing that tax deeds should be conclusive of the regularity of the proceedings from the assessment to the execution of the deed, a sale of land for the non-payment of a tax which is illegal because the cost of surveying the land had never been paid as required by the act of congress granting lands to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company would cast a cloud upon the title, and payment of such tax under protest, to avoid a threatened sale, would be an involuntary one.</p> <p>A land owner is not estopped to recover the amount of an invalid tax paid to the county involuntarily by the fact that, after such payment and prior to the commencement of the action, the county paid out the money to the various road and school districts of the county. ,</p> <p>The payment of an illegal tax upon land before the owner is delinquent, and before the institution of proceedings looking to its collection or enforcement against the land, and before he has been called upon to pay by any officer, is not an involuntary payment within the rule relating to the recovery of such payments, although nominally paid under protest.</p>