Curtis v. Whitney

ERROR to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin; the case being thus:

Mary Curtis brought suit under a statute of Wisconsin to have her title to a certain piece of land, which she claimed under a deed made on a sale for taxes, established and quieted as against the defendants.

The sale for taxes took place on the 11th day of May, 1865, and she received a certificate stating the sale, and that she would 'be entitled to a deed of conveyance of said land in three years from that date unless sooner redeemed according to law,' by payment of the amount bid, with interest and penalties; and accordingly, on the 12th day of May, A.D. 1868, she received the deed which she now sought to establish as the title to the land.

But the legislature of Wisconsin, on the 10th of April, 1867, enacted that in all such cases where land had been or should thereafter be sold for taxes, and any person should have been in the actual occupancy or possession of such land for thirty days or more within six months preceding the time when the deed should be applied for, the deed should not be issued unless a written notice should have been served on the owner orr occupant by the holder of the tax certificate, at least three months prior thereto. The act required that this notice should set forth a copy of the certificate, and state who was the holder and the time when the deed would be applied for.

In the present case there was such occupancy and no notice was served, and the court held that tax-deed void for want of it; overruling the objection of plaintiff, that the statute requiring notice was void as applied to her case, because it impaired the obligation of her contract evidenced by the certificate of sale.

The case having thus gone against the plaintiff, she brought the case here, setting up the same point that she set up below.

Mr. E. H. Ellis, for the plaintiff in error:

A tax sale of which the tax certificate is the evidence has been decided, by the courts of Wisconsin, to be a contract between the State of Wisconsin and the county making the sale on the one part and the purchaser on the other. By the provisions of this contract Mrs. Curtis was entitled to a deed in three years from the date of the sale (May 11th, 1865), subject only to one condition, viz.: 'unless sooner redeemed.' Nearly two years thereafter, viz., April 10th, 1867, an act of the legislature was passed by which the party of the second part was required to perform an additional service, involving both time, labor, and expense, in order to obtain the fulfilment of her contract. This requirement did, in our opinion, impair the obligation of the contract made at the time of the tax-sale.

Mr. T. O. Howe argued that no contract was violated.

Mr. Justice MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.