Rosehill Cemetery Co. v. Kern

Citations

• 147 Ill. 483

Syllabus

<p>1. Taxes—on exempted property, enjoined. It is well settled in this State that the collection of a tax levied upon property not subject to taxation will, on application of the owner, be enjoined. He has the right to assume that the exemption will be respected, and is not required to take notice of its illegal assessment and valuation, nor to appear before the local tribunals in that regard.</p> <p>2. Same—exemption—burden of proof. Where property is claimed to be exempt from taxation because of the use to which it is applied, the burden is upon the claimant to satisfactorily show that it is appropriated to the use specified in the law under which the exemption is claimed.</p> <p>3. Same—exemption of land used for burial purposes. Under the special charter of a cemetery company, which provides that “all estate, real and personal, held by the company, actually used by the corporation for burial purposes, or for the general use of lot holders, or subservient to burial uses, and which shall have been platted and recorded as cemetery grounds, shall be” exempt from taxation, the mere purchase of land for future use as burial grounds, and platting it, will not make it subservient to burial purposes, within the meaning of the charter, so as to exempt the same from taxation. The subserviency is not merely to cemetery uses or for general purposes of the company, but to “burial uses.”</p> <p>4. The word “subservient,” as used in the charter, may be properly construed to mean grounds not for actual burial purposes, viz., in which to deposit bodies, but useful in connection with such grounds, “serving to promote the end of burying the dead.”</p> <p>5. The court does not wish to be understood as holding that cemetery grounds are only exempt, under such a charter, when burials have been actually made upon them, or that the necessities of the corporation may not be reasonably anticipated by appropriating grounds to burial purposes before they are absolutely demanded, so as to br