Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 1).pdf/143

 ranted by law, or the persons assuming to assess and levy the same are without authority so to do, or where the proper taxing officials have acted fraudulently; and, in addition, plaintiff must bring himself within some recognized rule of equity jurisprudence; and, in the absence of statutory provisions regulating the subject, as a condition to relief in equity, the applicant must pay or tender the amount of taxes properly chargeable against his property. The rule as thus established works the tax-payer no wrong, and preserves the revenues of the state. Injustice could scarcely go further than to permit property which asks and receives the protection of the laws—property which unhesitatingly absorbs the full benefit of the expenditures and improvements made possible by public revenue—to escape its equitable contribution to the public burden because some official, through inefficiency or inadvertance, had failed, in time, manner, or form, in the performance of his duties. It is common knowledge that in a new state, with unsettled and shifting revenue laws, depending for their execution upon parties not familiar with fine distinctions or technical terms, grave mistakes and omissions must be, and are, of frequent occurrence. To depart from this salutary rule of non-interference would necessarily bring financial confusion, if not destruction, upon a large portion of the taxing municipalities within the state, and upon the state itself. We can only make the departure when we are ready to invite the result. In courts of law the rules are wholly different. In possessory actions between the holder of the tax-title and the patent title, where the interests of private parties alone are involved, and where the rule of caveat emptor applies in all its strictness, courts of law are scrupulously careful that no man be deprived of his property through tax proceedings that are not in all respects in substantial compliance with the statutory requirements.

Applying the principles hereinbefore enumerated to the facts in this case, we find that the plaintiff has invoked the equity powers of the court by a complaint that shows that a cloud has been cast upon the title to the real estate therein described by the issuance to the defendant corporation, by the treasurer of said county, of tax certificates, upon plaintiff’s lands, issued