William R. Day

“ The state statute limiting actions between individuals cannot operate to affect the right of the state to require the registration of the lands withheld from taxation, or prevent acts for the summary registration or forfeiture of such lands, wherein, as in the case at bar, an opportunity, not unreasonable in character, is given for complicance with the laws after the same go into effect, and the forfeiture is had upon a proceeding in which the owner of the title is summoned and heard. ”

“ Section 10 provides that when, for any five successive years after the 1st day of August, 1906, any owner or claimant of or to any land in the commonwealth shall fail to list the same for taxation and cause himself to be charged with the taxes properly chargeable thereon, or fail to pay the same, as provided by law, then such failure shall be cause for the forfeiture of his title and claim thereto, and the transfer of the same to the commonwealth of Kentucky ”

“ It is next contended that the Kentucky statute under consideration denies to the plaintiffs in error due process, of law, in violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
This court has had frequent occasion to comment upon the effect of this Amendment in respect to laws of the states for the levy and collection of taxes. A summary procedure has been sustained where the person taxed has been allowed opportunity to be heard in opposition to the enforcement of taxes and penalties against him. ”

“ No person is to be entitled to purchase back from the commonwealth the title so forfeited except such defendant as may, but for such forfeiture, establish in such proceeding a title thereto in himself upon which he could maintain an action of ejectment. Upon payment of the amount of the judgment, the court is required to enter a judgment retransferring to such defendant the title and claim so forfeited to and vested in the commonwealth. ”

“ The state is left to choose its own methods of taxation and its form and manner of enforcing the payment of the public revenues, subject, so far as the Federal power is concerned, to the restricting regulations of the Constitution of the United States. ”

“ Laws of a retroactive nature, imposing taxes or providing remedies for their assessment and collection, and not impairing vested rights, are not forbidden by the Federal Constitution. League v. Texas, 184 U.S. 156, 46 L. ed. 478, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 475. This court had occasion in a very early case to consider the meaning of an ex post facto law as the term is used in the Federal Constitution, prohibiting the states from passing any law of that character. ”

“ Under the Kentucky statutes the owner could not recover his property without paying for improvements made by the occupying claimant, and making allowances in connection therewith, which it was held had the effect of depriving the true owner of the property vested in him under the laws of Virginia at the time the compact became operative in 1789. ”

“ Case No. 47 was a petition brought by the Eastern Kentucky Coal Lands Corporation under article 3, for the assessment and taxation of the tracts of land in controversy, consisting of large bodies of land which the Eastern Kentucky Coal Lands Corporation claimed to be the owners of under patents issued under Virginia warrants, principally antedating the year 1789 ”

“ A time not unreasonably short for the beginning of actions may be fixed by the legislature, having in view particular conditions, without violating the due process clause. Terry v. Anderson, 95 U.S. 628, 24 L. ed. 365. ”

“ Let the language of the compact be literally applied, and we have the anomaly presented of a sovereign state governed by the laws of another sovereign; of one half the territory of a sovereign state hopelessly and forever subjected to the laws of another state. Or a motley multiform administration of laws, under which A would be subject to one class of laws, because holding under a Virginia grant ”

“ Justice Story, 'by the laws of Virginia to pay for improvements which he has not authorized, which he may not want, or which he may deem useless, than he is to pay a sum to a stranger for the liberty of possessing and using his own property, according to the rights and interests secured to him by those laws. ”