Pajaro Valley Bank v. County of Santa Cruz

Four cases have been consolidated, in three of which banks are respondents, and in the fourth, a realty-owning corporation; and in all four eases the County of Santa Cruz is appellant. Respondents are plaintiffs in actions to recover taxes paid under protest. The question is whether certain safe-deposit boxes and their metal containers are taxable real property, as fixtures, or personal property and nontaxable, as the trial court found them to be.

The facts have been agreed upon. Pajaro Valley Bank is an independent bank operating in Watsonville, California. The safe-deposit boxes upon which an ad valorem property tax was imposed were purchased by Pajaro Bank from an independent distributor dealing in the sale of these boxes. These boxes come in containers called “nests” which range in dimension 2 feet deep by 2 feet wide and from 2 feet to 4 feet in height. They vary in weight from 200 to 1,400 pounds each, depending on the size, and each nest contains from 6 to 84 individual boxes.

The boxes are contained in the bank vault, the same vault where other valuables are kept by the bank, although the vault is divided into sections: one section for safe-deposit boxes, the other…