Grimes

This is an appeal from a judgment in favor of plaintiff in a suit in assumpsit for the repayment of an assessment levied by a water protection district of Merced County, on the ground that the proposed improvements for which the district was organized and the purpose for which the assessment was levied were abandoned.

Prior to 1920 the board of supervisors of Merced County organized the Bear Creek Protection District of that county, pursuant to the protection district statutes of California of 1895, and subsequent amendments thereto (DBering’s General Laws, 1923, p. 2488), for the purpose of improving the natural watercourses therein. July 18, 1920, an assessment was regularly levied on all the property within this district, by means of which $7,588 was collected and paid into the county treasury and assigned to the special Bear Creek Protection District fund. The respondent owned lands within the limits of this district, upon which she was assessed the sum of $357.58, which thereupon became a lien upon her property. For failure to pay this tax the property was sold in June, 1921, to the state for the delinquent assessment. In September, 1925, respondent redeemed this property…