I have been very successful recently in having tax sales completely overturned and the property given back to my clients.
In the first case, the hearing started off with the Judge yelling at my clients because they had not updated their address with the tax assessment office so when the tax claim bureau tried to serve the notice of tax sale on them they never received it. We won that case on a technicality which requires the tax claim bureau to provide proof that they sent the notice of tax sale to the owner(s) by first class mail after the certified mail was returned unclaimed. The solicitor for the tax claim bureau told me after the case that he didn’t even know that was a requirement. The Judge completely changed her tune after I gave her a trial memo which showed that the court was required to overturn the tax sale if the tax claim bureau did not have proof of mailing by first class mail which was the case in this matter. In addition, we were able to have the Judge order the tenant to vacate the property and my client was only required to pay her $4,500.00 for her expenses in moving in and moving out.
In another case, while our client was in prison, the tax claim bureau sold his property at tax sale and never gave him any notice. Even though the tax claim bureau obtained a court order allowing them to sell certain owners’ property without having them personally served, we had the sale overturned on the grounds that the tax claim bureau did not do a reasonable search to find our client. All the tax claim bureau had to do was go on the judicial website and put in my client’s name and it would show what prison he was in. It is kind of like one hand of the government takes someone and locks them up and while he is there the other hand of the government sells his property without giving him notice or an opportunity to be heard. The Judge found that the tax claim bureau did not engage in reasonable notification efforts to ascertain the whereabouts of the property owner. He found that without personal service of the notice of tax sale or the establishment of good cause to waive personal service, the tax 4590599v1 000001.00019 sale of the property was void and would be set aside. We made new law in the case. We also sued the people who bought our client’s property at tax sale while he was in prison and obtained a default judgment against them because while he was in prison they went in and took every item of personal property that he had in the house and disposed of the vast majority of it without providing an accounting and then rented his property to a third party. They had no right to do that especially since they never secured a deed to our client’s property.
The most important thing to remember is to hire counsel experienced in this area of the law as soon as you learn of the tax sale. The sooner you act, the better your chances are to be successful.
Contact Michael G. Louis at [email protected] or via phone at (610) 840-0228.
