Kent vs. Brown & Learned. the sale is completed; it may be a good ground for an injunction but not for a suit in nullity. A judgment rendered by a court of competent jurisdiction imparts absolute verity, and has the force of the thing adjudged until set aside in a direct action of nullity; it cannot be attacked collaterally. A PPEAL from the Ninth District Court, Parish of Concordia. Dagg & Mason and Montgomery & Ransdell for Plaintiffs and Appellants: The tax title pleaded by defendants is void for the following reasons: 1st. There was no sufficient description of the property. K. S. §§ 3266, 3272; Act 42 of 1871, sec. 32; Bur. 330-1; Blk on Tax Titles, pp. 136, 137 (a) 148; 13 L. 210; 6 Ann. 542; 8 Ann. 19; 9 Ann. 540; 32 Ann. 235; 33 Ann. 556, 1164; 37 Ann. 61. 21. 3d. The rolls were not signed and sworn to by the tax collectors and board of assessors, as required by law. R. S. §§ 3274, 3278; Acts 1871, No. 42, sec. 39, Blackwell, 122-3-4-9, 281; Burroughs. 274, 296; 9 Neb. 397; 6 Neb. 236; 33 Ann. 1165–6. The assessment in 1867 was in name of Geo. F. Sanderson instead of estate of G. F. Sanderson. See 23 Ann. 526; 35 Ann. 1086; Blackwell, pp. 150, 280. 4th. The property was placed on, resident, when it should have been placed on non-resi. dent roll. R. S. § 3251; Acts 1870. No. 23, §§ 19-32; Acts 1871, No. 42, § 18; Cooley, 277; Blk. 159-60; 34 Ann. 126. 5th. No parish taxes were extended on assessment rolls as required by Acts 1870, § 44. Nor were there any separate rolls as required by Act 42, sec. 43, of 1871; 34 Ann. 126. 6th. The parish taxes for the years 1870, 1871 and 1872 were illegal, being in excess of the State tax. 34 Ann. 126, and authorities there cited. 7th. The tax title shows that the property was sold to pay taxes which the assessment rolls and the delinquent lists, as recorded in the mortgage books, did not show to be due. 8th. A portion of the taxes for which the property was sold appear to have been paid. 9th. Lands sold at tax sale, under Act 47 of 1873, should not have been divided into lots. The judgment is void for the following reasons: 1st. The Carroll court was without jurisdiction to appoint Mrs. Sanderson tutrix, as she, at the time, was a resident of New Orleans. C. C. 307, 335; C. P. 944, 948-9-50; 2 Ann. 71. The nullity appears on the face of the proceedings. 32 Ann. 891; see also Cooley's Con. Lim. 503 (407); 11 How. 437. 2d. If legally appointed, Mrs. S. had forfeited her tutorship by marrying again without provoking a family meeting. C. C. 254; 3 M. 346; 5 Ann. 596; 32 Ann. 51. 3d. The co-tutor was not a party to the judgment. 4th. The Carroll court was without jurisdiction ratione persona to render judgment. The consent of the tutor does not give the court jurisdiction over the minor. C. P. 91. 5th. The judgment was by confession. The attorney who gave the confession was without authority from the tutrix. 29 Ann. 600; 6 Ann. 115; 3 L. 203; 7 Ann. 440. The tutrix herself could not have given the confession. 15 Ann. 226; 31 Ann, 389; 32 Ann. 906. 6th. The interests of the tutrix and her ward were in conflict. The latter should have been represented by an under tutor. C. C. 275; 2 L. 142; 11 R. 120; 21 Ann. 712; 23 Ann. 617. Percy Roberts, Hiram R. Steele and J. N. Luce for Defendants and Warrantors. Miller & Finney, Conner & Conner and W. T. Martin for the Citizens' Bank, one of the Warrantors: The judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction appointing a tutrix cannot be attacked collaterally. Irregularities in the constitution of a family meeting cannot be urged collaterally against the appointment of a tutrix made by decree of a competent court in Kent vs. Brown & Learned. pursuance of authority conferred by a family meeting. 36 Ann. 831; 35 Ann. 592: 32 Ann. 955, 398, et passim. Where there is no administrator appointed, a tutor has the right to stand in court in a suit brought to enforce a debt against the succession. 36 Ann. 744; 35 Ann. 296, 591, 826, et passim. A tax title based upon a proper assessment conveys a valid title. 37 Ann. 357; 35 Ann. 894; 32 Ann. 707; 31 Ann. 662. If a tax title can be set aside at all, the owner thus dispossessed will be entitled to be maintained in all the rights he may have against the succession of the owner of the property. 32 Ann. 295, 296; 31 Ann. 839. The opinion of the Court was delivered by POCHÉ, J. Plaintiff, as the sole heir of her deceased father, G. F. Sanderson, claims ownership of the "Panola" plantation, in the parish of Concordia, which was the property of her father at the time of his death, in 1863, and which is alleged to be now in the possession in bad faith of the defendants, as owners thereof. The defendants claim title to the property by right of purchase from W. A. Peale for three-fifths, and from the Citizens' Bank, and Mrs. Georgia Miller Smith for one-fifth each, and they call their ven dors in warranty. The warrantors, defending the title of their vendees, claim to derive their former ownership from a tax sale of the property made in December, 1873. In amended pleadings the defendants set up a judgment which they hold by transfer from W. A. Peale, against the succession of G. F. Sanderson in the sum of $38,628.01, with interest of 8 per cent per annum from January 1, 1867, until paid, subject to a credit of $15,000 of that date, for which they claim judgment in reconvention against plaintiff, as the sole heir of her father, whose succession she has accepted. Alleging their possession in good faith, they also claim reimbursement of the sum of $9722 on account of taxes on the property paid by them, and for valuable improvements placed thereon by them, during their possession thereof, in case of eviction. On trial plaintiff assailed the tax sale as a nullity by reason of numerous illegalities and irregularities, both in the assessment and in the sale for taxes, and she also urged the nullity of the judgment against her father's succession on innumerable grounds to be hereinafter considered. After plaintiff had developed her attack of the tax sale as a nullity, the defendants and warrantors pleaded the exception of res adjudicata in bar thereof, resting on a judgment rendered by the district court of Concordia on the 24th of November, 1874, confirming and homologat Kent vs. Brown & Learned. ing said tax sale, in conformity with monition proceedings which had been previously instituted and published, according to law, by the purchaser at said tax sale. The district judge declared the sale to be null, but recognizing the validity and binding force of the judgment pleaded in reconvention by the defendants, which he considered to be in excess of the real cash value of the property in suit, he refused to adjudicate the nullity which he declared to have been established by the law and the evidence of the case, and he rendered judgment in favor of the defendants rejecting plaintiff's demand for the ownership of the property. Plaintiff has appealed, and defendants pray for an amendment looking to a formal recognition of their title. The grounds of nullity alleged against the tax sale are as follows: 1st. That the assessments for the years 1867 to 1872 inclusively, for which years' taxes the property was sold, is invalid, because the assessment rolls for those years are not properly signed, sworn to or filed. 2d. That the assessment for 1867 is invalid because the property for that year is assessed to George F. Sanderson, and not to his succession. .6 3d. That the description of the property in 1867 as Panola" is insufficient. 4th. That the property is assessed for all of the above years on the resident portion of the rolls. 5th. That all the taxes, State and parish, are not extended on the assessment rolls. 6th. That during the years 1871 and 1872 State and parish taxes are not extended on separate assessment rolls. 7th. That the tax for general parish purposes is in excess of four mills for the years 1869, 1870, 1871 and 1872. 8th. That the taxes for which the property was sold, according to the tax deed, do not correspond in amount with the taxes as shown by the assessment rolls, delinquent lists and recorded delinquent lists. 9th. That proper notices of the sale were not given. I. In support of the first ground of nullity, plaintiff introduced in evidence, over defendants' objection, certain assessment rolls which had been found in the recorder's office, several of which are open to the objections contained in that ground. Defendants' counsel then introduced in evidence certificates from the Auditor's office, showing the existence in that office of assessment rolls Kent vs. Brown & Learned.. for the same years, which were in form, and they offered testimony to show that the rolls relied on by plaintiff were not those on which the tax collectors had acted, and that the correct rolls, which were triplicates of those found in the Auditor's office, were missing from the recorder's office of Concordia. From the preponderance of the evidence, and in consideration of the legal presumption that the officer had done his duty, we conclude that defendants' contention is correct; and that the genuine rolls originally left in possession of the recorder, if produced, would have agreed in their tenor, signature and recitals with the triplicate copies now on file, as returned in each consecutive year, in the Auditor's office. This presumption is more than confirmed by our knowledge of the conscientious ability of the attorneys, Mayo and Spencer, who, as counsel for the Citizens' Bank, Peale and Miller, warrantors herein, and at that time judgment creditors of the succession of Sanderson, conducted all the proceedings which resulted in the tax sale now under consideration. We must decline to accept the theory which rests on the supposition that these attorneys would have risked the funds of their clients, amounting to $5,564 56, the amount of their bid at the sale, on the faith of proceedings which lacked the foundation prescribed by law. II. The main question presented by the second ground of nullity involves the existence of any information in the records of Concordia touching the death of Sanderson, when the assessor made the rolls for the year 1867. We gather from the record that his domicile was in the parish of Carroll, several hundred miles above the parish seat of Concordia, and that he died in the State of Georgia in the year. 1863, his own wife being unable to give the precise date or mouth when his death occurred, and that his succession was opened only in the year 1866, in Carroll. We must take judicial cognizance of the state of war in which the country was then engaged, of the closing of the courts during several years, of the difficulty, and at times, of the impossibility of communicating between the parishes of Concordia and Carroll, and from the record it appears that no positive information could be had from the records of Concordia of the whereabouts of Geo. F. Sanderson, or of the fact as to whether he was dead or alive. From the only sources of knowledge within the reach of the assessor, he had no alternative but to list the property in the name of that owner, to whom it had been Kent vs. Brown & Learned. assessed, and who had paid the taxes thereon for years past. Those circumstances, which are entitled to great weight, entirely remove this question from the rule or scope of the two decisions mainly relied on by plaintiff's counsel. In Stafford's case, 33 Ann. 520, it was in proof that when the assessor listed the property in the name of "L. A. Stafford," he had been officially informed of his death by the very persons to whom he had sent notices of assessment as the agents of L. A. Stafford. In Hickman's case, 35 Ann. 1086, the record showed that the property had never been assessed in the true owner's name, Mrs. Marie Emma Blanchard, from the time she had acquired it in 1860, to the time when it was sold for taxes in 1872, as the property of Mrs. E. A. Blanchard. The The correct solution of that point is confirmed by the case of Congreve et al. vs. City of New Orleans, 33 Ann. 816, in which it was contended that the assessment of property to the "Estate of Mrs. R. Jennings," when it should have been assessed to her heirs, who had been put in possession of the property as such, was a fatal error. Court held that, as there was no proof of such transfer in the records of the parish where the property was situated, there was no irregularity in the assessment. See also, 28 Ann. 240, City of New Orleans vs. Ferguson. III, V, VI, VIII. The discussion of the errors charged in the objections numbered 3, 5, 6 and 8, can be properly considered and disposed of under one subdivision of the subject. In our opinion, these few grounds present questions of relative nullities, and not matters of substance or radical defects. Hence, we conclude that these errors, if shown to exist, would be covered by the prescription of five years, and that they have been corrected by the judgment of the court on the monition applied for by the purchasers at the tax sale. Under our discussion of the first two grounds of nullity, urged by plaintiff, and in our disposition hereinafter of the seventh ground, we think that the conclusion is justifiable that the assessment is not radically defective. Now, the record shows that the property in suit has been designated and known as the "Panola" plantation, in the parish of Concordia, for more than forty years; hence, it follows that the description, although defective under the requirements of the law, was sufficient in fact to inform any and all parties in interest of the nature and locality of |