Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/173

 payment to defendant or into court for the use of defendant, the sum of $217.83, and the further sum of $——, the costs of defendant, to be taxed, the plaintffplaintiff [sic] should have his decree adjugingadjudging [sic] and decreeing that defendant has no right, title or interest in or to said lands or any part thereof.” Upon these findings the district court entered a judgment which conforms in substance to the conclusions of law heretofore set out.

The errors assigned here are in brief that the trial court erred in its conclusions of law based on the facts contained in the findings of fact in this, that the trial court awarded judgment in favor of the plaintiff only on condition that plaintiff should advance and pay defendant's costs of suit; alsothe sums paid by defendant at the tax sale for the lands, and the sums paid sub- sequently by defendant as taxes for 1887 and 1888. At the trial defendant abandoned all claim of title to the land which he had alleged in his answer and based upon the tax sale of 1887 and the deed delivered him by the county treasurer in pursuance of such sale; and hence the trial court could not well do otherwise than find as it did, as a conclusion of law, “that the sale of said land and deed under which defendant claims title is void.”

The court below does not anywhere state on what particular grounds it bases its conclusion that the tax sale and deed are void, but an examination of the findings of fact, as above set out, furnishes abundant vindication of the conclusion of law as one proper to be made in the case. We find no difficulty in reaching the conclusion from the record that none of the alleged taxes had any legal validity or inception whatever, and that consequently, the tax sale and deed were wholly inoperative as a means of transferring title to the land from the plaintiff to the defendant; and this on account of fundamental defects which go to the groundwork of the alleged taxes. While it is true that the trial court in one of its additional findings states, “said lands were assessed for taxes by the proper officer in the year 1886,” yet this general conclusion of the court is practically annulled by another specific finding of fact in which the court declares in substance that said lands were only described in the assessment roll and tax list of said county in the years 1886, 1887 and 1888, in manner and form as detailed in the