Anderson

Plaintiffs appeal from a judgment entered upon the sustaining of a demurrer without leave to amend to their petition for mandate. Defendant Anderson is the Tax Collector-Redemption Officer and defendant McMullen is the Assessor of Sonoma County. A hearing was granted by this court, after decision by the Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, Division One, for the purpose of giving further study to the problems presented. After such study we have concluded that the opinion of the Court of Appeal, prepared by Mr. Presiding Justice Molinari and concurred in by Justices Sims and Elkington, correctly treats and disposes of the issues involved, and it is therefore adopted as and for the opinion of this court, with certain further comments of our own pertinent to contentions urged. Such opinion (with appropriate deletions and additions as indicated) is as follows r 1

[ ] The question presented on appeal is whether upon the request of an owner of an undivided interest in real property, which property has been sold and deeded to the state for delinquent taxes, the county redemption officer and assessor are required under Revenue and Taxation Code sections 4153 and 4154 to…

I concur, although I am concerned about the administrative burden which the result may impose on county assessing agencies and redemption officers, particularly in metropolitan areas. There is cited in 37 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen. 223 an example of an owner of a 17/8345 interest in real property seeking a separate assessment thereon. Under our opinion in the instant case, the defaulting taxpayer of that minute interest can compel separate assessment in order to assert a right of redemption.

Nevertheless, the analysis of Justice Molinari, adopted by this court, is persuasive. If the spectre of ministerial burden becomes real and intolerable, county assessors will undoubtedly address their grievance to the Legislature.

The Attorney General’s opinion upon which defendants *646 rely was rendered in 1961, during my tenure as the Attorney General of California. ( 37 Ops.Cal.Atty.Gen. 223 ; see discussion in 50 Cal.L.Rev. 299, 324-328 (1962).) In concurring with my judicial colleagues, I thus find myself in the identical predicament of Mr. Justice Jackson in McGrath v. Kristensen (1950) 340 U.S. 162, 176 [ 95 L.Ed. 173, 184 , 71 S.Ct. 224 ], Ten years before, as Attorney General of the United…