Patane

Plaintiff instituted an action for refund of taxes which he claimed were illegally assessed and collected by the Employment Development Department (department) as unemployment insurance contributions for 1976. Defendant moved for summary judgment on the ground that plaintiff’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies deprived the trial court of jurisdiction over the action. The trial court granted the motion and entered judgment accordingly. Plaintiff appeals. We shall affirm the judgment, holding that plaintiff’s failure to exhaust administrative remedies is established beyond reasonable dispute and that such failure constitutes a fatal departure from the procedure governing an action for refund of taxes to which no extra statutory exceptions apply.

In 1976 plaintiff entered into written agreements with certain individuals called share farmers, whereby they would harvest plaintiff’s cucumber crop in exchange for 50 percent of the gross proceeds of the harvest. Each contracting share farmer warranted that he was an independent contractor.

In 1977, the Department of Benefit Payments, the department’s predecessor agency, audited plaintiff’s operations to ascertain…