{ "id": 1449941, "name": "Hopkins v. Fields", "name_abbreviation": "Hopkins v. Fields", "decision_date": "1941-07-07", "docket_number": "4-6429", "first_page": "890", "last_page": "899", "citations": [ { "type": "official", "cite": "202 Ark. 890" }, { "type": "parallel", "cite": "154 S.W.2d 22" } ], "court": { "name_abbreviation": "Ark.", "id": 8808, "name": "Arkansas Supreme Court" }, "jurisdiction": { "id": 34, "name_long": "Arkansas", "name": "Ark." }, "cites_to": [ { "cite": "150 S. W. 2d 950", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.2d", "case_ids": [ 1449836 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/202/0173-01" ] }, { "cite": "88 S. W. 2d 1005", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.2d", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "191 Ark. 1030", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1418427 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/191/1030-01" ] }, { "cite": "36 A. L. R. 1333", "category": "reporters:specialty", "reporter": "A.L.R.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "267 S. W. 353", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "166 Ark. 617", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1378520 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/166/0617-01" ] }, { "cite": "32 L. Ed. 766", "category": "reporters:federal", "reporter": "L. Ed.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "120 U. S. 678", "category": "reporters:federal", "reporter": "U.S.", "case_ids": [ 3468169 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/us/120/0678-01" ] }, { "cite": "198 U. S. 253", "category": "reporters:federal", "reporter": "U.S.", "case_ids": [ 1499424 ], "weight": 3, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/us/198/0253-01" ] }, { "cite": "86 S. W. 2d 917", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.2d", "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "191 Ark. 487", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1418651 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/191/0487-01" ] }, { "cite": "75 S. W. 2d 62", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.2d", "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "189 Ark. 723", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1425423 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/189/0723-01" ] }, { "cite": "97 A. L. R. 905", "category": "reporters:specialty", "reporter": "A.L.R.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "295 U. S. 56", "category": "reporters:federal", "reporter": "U.S.", "case_ids": [ 333728 ], "weight": 3, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/us/295/0056-01" ] }, { "cite": "137 S. W. 251", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "99 Ark. 100", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1314468 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/99/0100-01" ] }, { "cite": "60 S. W. 2d 561", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.2d", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "187 Ark. 480", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1431952 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/187/0480-01" ] } ], "analysis": { "cardinality": 668, "char_count": 15397, "ocr_confidence": 0.519, "pagerank": { "raw": 1.0263743048848952e-07, "percentile": 0.5468170152005001 }, "sha256": "342059c3e1fcc351a996a937a5de259766f7b5f7f9e921fd743db2f1a48e6e0c", "simhash": "1:9b83f11cdf2be130", "word_count": 2707 }, "last_updated": "2023-07-14T17:41:33.899118+00:00", "provenance": { "date_added": "2019-08-29", "source": "Harvard", "batch": "2018" }, "casebody": { "judges": [ "Holt, J., not participating." ], "parties": [ "Hopkins v. Fields." ], "opinions": [ { "text": "Smith, J.\nThe Sebastian Bridge District was organized under act 104 of the Acts of 1913, p. 380. Appellant owned lot 18, block 2, Fishback Addition No. 2 to the city of Fort Smith, which lot was subject to the taxes levied by the bridg-e district. She failed to pay taxes due the district, and by appropriate foreclosure proceedings the lot was sold to the district, which, on September 17,1940, conveyed the lot to appellees for the consideration of $11.22, this being the total amount of the tax, penalty, interest and costs due on the lot.\nAppellant filed a pleading which she called an intervention in the foreclosure suit on February 14, 1941, in which she tendered the full amount-of the tax, etc., for which the lot sold, and prayed that she be allowed to redeem her lot. This relief was denied her, and from that decree is this appeal.\nThe sale is first attacked upon the authority of the case of Haglin v. Hunt, 187 Ark. 480, 60 S. W. 2d 561. There, two lots were assessed and sold in solido to an individual for the taxes due the Sebastian Bridge District. The.sale was set aside by the court below \u2014 and that decree was affirmed by this court \u2014 it being held that the sale was not made in the manner required by law. We held that the commissioner making the sale should have offered, first, one lot, and then the other, to ascertain if any one would pay the taxes on both lots for one or the other of them, and that both lots should not have been sold unless it appeared that no one would bid the taxes, etc., for less than the whole amount against both lots. Here, however, only one lot was sold, and the sale was to the district, as authorized by act 104 of 1913, because no one bid the amount of the taxes, etc., due on the lot. It is not to be assumed that if no one would pay the taxes, etc., for the whole of the lot, some one might have paid the taxes, etc., for a fractional part of it.\nSection 29 of the act provides: \u201cThe property shall be offered to the person who will' pay the assessment, penalty and costs for the least amount of said land; and, if none should offer the amount of the assessment, penalty and costs then the delinquent land shall be stricken off to the bridge district and a deed shall be made to it in like manner as to an individual purchaser. And it shall be lawful for said district to hold such land until such time as it may be sold advantageously, in the judgment of the commission. \u2019 \u2019\nThe authority for selling to the district arose'out of the failure of any individual to buy the lot at the sale, and as no one offered to buy the lot \u201cthe delinquent land\u201d was stricken off to the bridge district. In that event, the delinquent land or lot, and not some fractional part of it, is stricken off to the district, and that was done here, so that the Haglin case, sufra, has no application.\nThe lot was sold September 11, 1939, and the intervention ' (which, in effect, is an application to redeem) was filed February 14, 1941, so that more than one year had elapsed between the date of the sale and the date of the offer to redeem, and it was held that the offer to redeem had not been made within the time allowed by act 104, under the provisions of which the lot had been sold, and the intervention was dismissed as being without equity.\nSection 32 of act 104 provides that \u2018 \u2018 The owner may redeem from the purchaser at any time within one year after the sale, by paying him the amount paid by him with twenty per cent, thereon, which redemption shall be noted upon the margin of the decree by the purchaser.\u201d\nThe insistence is \u2014 and the finding by the court below was \u2014 that the right of redemption must have been exercised within the time allowed by the act under the provisions of which the lot was sold, and that the provision in regard to redemption is unaffected and unchanged by later legislation.\nAppellant asserts the right to redeem under any one of several sections of the Digest, \u00a7 7331, Pope\u2019s Digest, among others. This section was enacted as act 252 of the Acts of 1933, p. 790; but ive do not think it applicable to this case, for the reason that its provisions are limited to municipal improvement districts, and the Sebastian Bridge District is not a municipal improvement district. Municipal improvement districts are those districts organized by the governing agency of the city or town or municipality in which they are located and of which they are a part, or the whole thereof, such as streets, sewers, waterworks, etc. Districts which include and impose taxes upon lands, both rural and urban, are not municipal improvement districts. These are road, bridge, levee, drainage, fencing, etc., districts. Butler v. Board Directors Fourche Drainage District, 99 Ark. 100, 137 S. W. 251. The Sebastian Bridge District includes, not only the entire city of Fort Smith, but includes also the whole of the Fort Smith District of Sebastian county, and is not, therefore, a, municipal improvement district, and the provisions of \u00a7 7331, Pope\u2019s Digest, are inapplicable for that reason. Moreover, \u00a7 7331, Pope\u2019s Digest, is identical with and was enacted as act 252 of the Acts of 1933, to which act further reference will be made.\nThe right of redemption is asserted also under the provisions of \u00a7 5644, Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest.\nThis section was a part of act 43 of the Acts of 1915, p. 123, entitled, \u201cAn Act to regulate sales by Commissioners in Chancery for special assessments and redemptions therefrom.\u201d The act consists of a single section, yet it was broken into and appears as three sections in Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest, to-wit: Sections 5642, 5643 and 5644. Of these several sections, \u00a7\u00a7 5642 and 5643 are carried forward in Pope\u2019s Digest, where they appear as \u00a7\u00a7 7329 and 7330, respectively. Section 5644, Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest, is omitted from and does not appear in Pope\u2019s Digest.\nThe Digester has this note appearing between \u00a7\u00a7 7329 \u2022 and 7330, Pope\u2019s Digest: \u201cThis act was repealed by act 129 of 1933, but the repealing act was held void by the Supreme Court of the United States in W. B. Worthen Co. v. Kavanaugh, 295 U. S. 56, 55 S. Ct. 555, 79 L. Ed. 1298, 97 A. L. R. 905, in a suit involving bonds issued before its passage, reversing W. B. Worthen Co. v. Delinquent Lands, 189 Ark. 723, 75 S. W. 2d 62. See, also, Arkansas Mortgage & Securities Co. v. Street Improvement District, 191 Ark. 487, 86 S. W. 2d 917.\u201d\nAct 129 of the Acts of 1933, p. 375, is entitled, \u201cAn Act to repeal \u00a7 5642 of Crawford and Moses\u2019 Digest.\u201d This act, in its entirety, exclusive of the emergency clause, reads as follows: \u201cSection 1. Section 5642 of Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest is hereby repealed.\u201d\nThis repealing act, No. 129, along with acts 252 and 278, passed at the same session of the General Assembly, was invalidated by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Worthen case, supra.\nWith the holding of that court in that case that acts 129, 252 and 278 of 1933 were invalid in their application to existing contracts, there remained some inquiry whether those acts were totally invalid, or could be separated in their applications to situations not affected by the contract clause of the national constitution. In other words, could the provisions of those acts be applied to situations where no contracts existing prior to their enactment would be affected?\nIn Arkansas Mortgage & Security Company v. Street Improvement District 419, 191 Ark. 487, 86 S. W. 2d 917, in making a passing reference to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the said Worthen case, this court referred to it as holding that acts 129, 252 and 278- of 1933 were invalid so far as they affect existing bonds; having no occasion to consider the question further.\nIt is common knowledge that the work of the improvement districts affected by those acts was done with borrowed money realized from bond issues extending over long periods of time; and that the maturities of many of those bond issues had been extended beyond the original dates. As a matter of law, the contract rights of the original bond issues would be carried forward in the refunding issues. Arkansas Mortgage & Security Co. v. Street Improvement District No. 419, supra.\nIn the situations described it is evident there would be few instances where the said acts of 1933 could be applied without violating contract rights in existence before those acts were passed; and that an effort to so apply them would result in the utmost confusion. It could not be presumed that the Legislature would have enacted those statutes in their general terms, and intended they should be applied only to the very limited field where contracts would not be affected.\nAgain, this situation is a proper one for the application of the principle that a questioned statute must be valid as it affects all that its terms embrace, or altogether void. U. S. v. JuToy, 198 U. S. 253, 25 S. Ct. 644, 49 L. Ed. 1040; Baldwin v. Franks, 120 U. S. 678, 7 S. Ct. 656, 32 L. Ed. 766; Replogle v. Little Rock, 166 Ark. 617, 267 S. W. 353, 36 A. L. R. 1333.\nThe insistence of appellees is that the effect of the decision in this Worthen case, supra, by the Supreme Court of the United States was to invalidate the entire act of 1915, supra, appearing as \u00a7\u00a7 5642, 5643 and 5644, Crawford & Moses \u2019 Digest.\nThe opinion of this court in the case of W. B. Worthen Company v. Delinquent Lands, 189 Ark. 723, 75 S. W. 2d 62, rendered October 15, 1934, did not regard the repeal of \u00a7 5642, Crawford & Aloses\u2019 Digest, (which was accomplished by act 129, approved March 21, 1933), as rendering \u00a7 5644, Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest, ineffective, for it was there said: \u201cSection 5644 of Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest, which is a section of the municipal improvement district act of 1915, by plain terms gives to property owners in all such districts five years in which to redeem from such sales.\u201d\nThe decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Worthen case, supra, did not strike down \u00a7 5644, Crawford & Aloses \u2019 Digest, which does not appear in Pope\u2019s Digest.\nThere was passed, at the 1925 session of the General Assembly, act 359, p. 1058, \u00a7 2 of which reads as follows: \u201cHereafter all'persons shall have the right to redeem from the sale for taxes of road, drainage, levee or other improvement districts at any time within two years from the date when such lands are sold by the commissioner making the sale, and not thereafter; provided that the provisions of this section shall not apply to property which shall have become delinquent or have forfeited prior to the passage of this act.\u201d\nIt was said of this act in our Worthen case, supra, that: \u201cSection 2 of act 359 of 1925 needs no interpretation. It provides that it is applicable to \u2018road, drainage, levee of (or) other improvement districts? Had it been intended to apply to paving, sewerage, water and such municipal districts, the Legislature could and would have so said in plain language. The only conceivable reason asserted as to its applicability to municipal improvement districts is \u2018of (or) other improvement district,\u2019 but this phrase has reference to other improvement districts of the same kind as those specifically enumerated. The rule of ejusdem generis has ever been applied by us under such circumstances. (Citing numerous eases.)\u201d\nIt would appear, therefore, that the time of five years allowed by \u00a7 5644, Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest, for redemption from any sale for improvement district taxes has been reduced, in cases to which act 359 applies, to two years; but as act 359 does not apply to municipal improvement districts, the five years, allowed by \u00a7 5644, Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest, for redemption from sales by municipal improvement districts, remains unchanged.\nThe Sebastian Bridge District \u2014 not being a municipal improvement district \u2014 is of the class of improvement districts to which act 359 does apply, and two years are, therefore, allowed, from the date when lands are sold for the nonpayment of the bridge assessments, in which to redeem. Appellant offered to redeem within that time, and should be permitted to do so, upon complying with the provision of \u00a7 32 of act 104, above quoted. The subsequent legislation extended the time within which redemption might be effected, but did not change the manner in which that right might be exercised.\nIt is insisted that the General Assembly has not changed, and is without power to change, the period of redemption allowed by act 104, supra, under which the district was formed and assessments levied. \"We have frequently held to the contrary. In the recent case of Baur v. Gwaltney, 191 Ark. 1030, 88 S. W. 2d 1005, it was said: \u201cWe have several times held that the Legislature may enlarge the period of redemption or extend the time in which redemption may be effected at any time during the redemption period as fixed by the former statute where the sale has been to the improvement district and not to a private individual. (Citing cases.) \u201d\nThe sale here was to the district, and \u00a7 2 of act 359 of the Acts of 1925, under which we here hold redemption permissible, was passed long before the sale.\nIn his excellent work, Improvement Districts in Arkansas, Mr. Sloan says, at \u00a71177, p. 1022, vol. 2, that \u201cThe redemption provisions in the general local assessments laws enacted prior to February 9, 1915, were, it seems, impliedly repealed by the 1915 act which is applicable to \u2018all special assessment districts of every kind\u2019 and provides: . . . Section 5644, Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest, is then quoted in full. \u2019 \u2019\nAfter quoting \u00a7 5644, Crawford & Moses\u2019 Digest, Mr. Sloan then proceeds to say: \u201cSince the road improvement and the road maintenance statutes were passed afterwards, their special provisions on the right of redemption will, at least to the extent that they conflict with the 1915 act, govern.\u201d\nIn the recent case of Person v. Miller Levee District No. 2, ante p. 173, 150 S. W. 2d 950, there was involved the right to redeem from a sale for delinquent levee taxes due the levee district, which had been created under a special act passed in 1911, which act allowed one year in which to redeem from sales for delinquent taxes. Act 69 of Acts of 1911, p. 89. Opposing eminent counsel mutually conceded that the period of redemption from that sale was two years, and we assumed, without expressly deciding, that that was the permissible period, but that question was not decisive of the case.\nThis is the period of time fixed by \u00a7 2 of act 359 of the Acts of 1925, sivpra, which we think applies here, and as the offer to redeem was made within two years from the date of sale, the decree of the court below will be reversed, and the cause is remanded with directions to grant that right.\nThe sum total and the effect of the views here expressed is that redemption from sale for municipal improvement taxes may be made, under \u00a7 5644, Crawford & Moses \u2019 Digest, within five years, except in the case of any district, if such there be, where a different period of redemption has been provided by subsequent legislation; and, subject to the same exception, tbe period of redemption from other sales for improvement district taxes is two years.\nHolt, J., not participating.", "type": "majority", "author": "Smith, J." } ], "attorneys": [ "Frcmklm Wilder and Ilardin $ Barton, for appellant.", "George W. Dodd, for appellee." ], "corrections": "", "head_matter": "Hopkins v. Fields.\n4-6429\n154 S. W. 2d 22\nOpinion delivered July 7, 1941.\nFrcmklm Wilder and Ilardin $ Barton, for appellant.\nGeorge W. Dodd, for appellee." }, "file_name": "0890-01", "first_page_order": 908, "last_page_order": 917 }