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Toyota Motor Credit Corporation v. State of Tennessee Department of Safety11/7/2003
only minimal effort and little or no expense.
The Department relies on Beazley v. Armour, 420 F. Supp. 503 (M.D. Tenn. 1976), as support for its argument that mailing a certified letter to a party's last known address is sufficient to satisfy due process when the party has failed to comply with a law requiring it to update its address. In Beazley, the Tennessee Department of Safety revoked the driver's license of a Tennessee resident after mailing notice of the impending revocation to his last known address. Id. at 509-10. As in the instant case, the notice was returned to the Department undelivered because the driver had moved and failed to comply with the statute requiring him to notify the Department within ten days of any change of address. Id. at 510. The federal district court concluded the notice provided was sufficient to satisfy due process, notwithstanding the return of the unopened letter to the Department, because it was the driver's own neglect in failing to inform the Department of his current address which prevented him from receiving actual notice in the case. Id.
This court, however, has reached a different result in tax forfeiture cases where the parties failed to comply with a law requiring them to maintain their current addresses on file with the property assessor's office. In Sunburst Bank v. Patterson, 971 S.W.2d 1 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1997), the western section of this court concluded that constructive notice of a tax sale was insufficient to satisfy due process in spite of the failure of the property owners and mortgagee bank to comply with a statute in effect at the time of the sale, Tennessee Code Annotated section 67-5-2502, which provided that any party with an interest in real property who was not in possession of the property waived its right to notice unless it filed an annual statement containing its name and address with the property assessor's office. Id. at 3-5. The property owners in Sunburst had leased their house to a third party. Id. at 2. Both the warranty deed and the trust deed, on file with the Shelby County Register of Deeds, directed the Shelby County Assessor of Property and the Shelby County Trustee to mail tax notices to the bank that held the mortgage, whose address was on the deeds. Id. at 5. Instead, the Shelby County Trustee sent the delinquent tax notices to the property address, followed by publication of the pending tax sale in a county newspaper. Id. at 2. The trial court found that the notice given was insufficient to satisfy due process and overturned the tax sale. In affirming the trial court, the Sunburst court applied Mennonite Bd. of Missions v. Adams, 462 U.S. 791, 103 S. Ct. 2706, 77 L. Ed. 2d 180 (1983), quoting from it as follows:
"Notice by mail or other means as certain to ensure actual notice is a minimum constitutional precondition to a proceeding which will adversely affect the liberty or property interests of any party, whether unlettered or well versed in commercial practice, if its name and address are reasonably ascertainable. Furthermore, a mortgagee's knowledge of delinquency in the payment of taxes is not equivalent to notice that a tax sale is pending."
Id. at 5 (quoting Mennonite, 462 U.S. at 799-800, 103 S. Ct. at 2712). The Sunburst court further noted that, according to the Mennonite Court, "`a party's ability to take steps to safeguard its interests does not relieve the State of its constitutional obligation.'" Id. (quoting Mennonite, 462 U.S. at 799, 103 S. Ct. at 2712). Thus, the Sunburst court concluded that because the current addresses of the parties having an interest in the property were reasonably ascertainable, the constructive notice provided did not satisfy due pro
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