Verizon California v. Bd. of Equalization
Annotate this CaseThe issue this case presented for the Court of Appeal centered on a property tax refund action for the 2007 tax year filed by plaintiff, Verizon California Inc. The trial court dismissed the case after it sustained defendants’ demurrer without leave to amend. Defendants are the Board of Equalization and nine individual counties. Verizon owned property in 38 counties, but it sought a refund for taxes paid for the 2007 tax year only from nine counties. The trial court sustained the demurrer on the ground Verizon failed to name indispensable parties, i.e., 29 absent counties in which Verizon owns property, even though Verizon sought no refund from those counties, pursuant to Rev. & Tax. Code, secs. 741, 5148, subds. (e)-(g). With the statute of limitations having run on filing a complaint against the absent parties, the case was dismissed. After its review, the Court of Appeal concluded section 5148 did not require a plaintiff to name as a defendant every county in which it owns property, unless it is seeking a refund from the county. Furthermore, the Court concluded that in this case the trial court abused its discretion in finding the absent counties were indispensable parties: "There is no evidence in the record that the absent counties will necessarily be affected in the future by a change in the 2007 assessment, and the absent counties’ object in seeing that the Board appraise the property at its highest value in future tax years will be adequately litigated by the named defendants."
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.