Miller v. Miller

—This is an action to quiet title, and an appeal is before us from the judgment, upon a bill of exceptions. Appellants introduced their tax deed in evidence and rested, insisting that such deed established a prima facie title in them. We are unable to see that respondents’ evidence was material to the case in any degree, and consequently we have nothing before us for consideration upon the question of title save the tax deed of appellants. In viewing a tax deed from a common-law stand-point, the author of Blackwell on Tax Titles, at section 845, says: “This deed, according to the principles of the common law, is simply a link in the chain of the grantee’s title. It does not ipso facto transfer the title of the owner as in grants from the government, or in deeds between man and man. The operative character of it depends upon the regularity of the anterior proceedings. The deed is not the title itself, nor even *378 evidence of it. Its recitals bind no one. It creates no estoppel upon the former owner. Ho presumption arises upon the mere production of the deed that the facts upon which it is based had any existence.” Such being the status of a tax deed at the common law, it is…