Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/176

 out power to assemble and hold a pretended session as a board of equalization in the same years. The law names the date of the meeting, and the public is chargeable with notice of a meeting on the day named in the law; but there is no notice to the public of any session of the board which meets neither at the time stated nor at an adjourned day named as a lawful meeting. Under the system which obtained at the time in question, our revenue laws did not afford an opportunity to the taxpayer to be heard by any officer or board touching the assessment to be made against his property, except at a public session of the county board sitting as a board of review and equalization, at the time and place named by the statute. But if no such session is had in any given year, then no opportunity is given that year to the taxpayer to be heard, and hence any so called “taxes” which may be exacted by the officers under color of law are mere arbitrary burdens upon the taxpayer. This is not “due process of law” within the meaning of any system of taxation which expressly authorizes and provides that the taxpayer may have a hearing upon the question of the valuation to be placed upon his property for taxation purposes. It is no answer to this to state that it does not appear that the plaintiff was injured by the non-assembly of the board at the time designated. From grave considerations of public policy the law will presume an injury. Sections 28, 29, Pol. Code (Comp. Laws, §§ 1584, 1585;) Black, Tax Titles, § 42; Maxwell v. Paine, 53 Mich. 30, 18 N. W. Rep. 546; Welty, Assem. § 154a; San Mateo Co. v. Southern Pac. R. Co., 8 Sawy. 270, 13 Fed. Rep. 722; Cooley, Tax’n (2d Ed.) p. 751; 1 Desty, Tax’n, 592; Commissioners v. Nettleton, 22 Minn. 356. In the case of Farrington v. Investment Co.,1 N. D. 102, 45 N. W. Rep. 191, a majority of this court held that where the plaintiff had appeared before the county board while it was sitting and acting as a board of equalization, and while there presented a petition to the board, and was accorded a hearing upon the subject-matter of the valuation to be placed upon certain lands of the plaintiff, the plaintiff was not in a position to come into a court of equity and pray for relief upon the ground that the session was not a lawful session. Under the circumstances existing in