Bank of Commerce v. First National Bank

150 Ind. 588
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedMay 4, 1898
DocketNo. 18,455
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 150 Ind. 588 (Bank of Commerce v. First National Bank) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bank of Commerce v. First National Bank, 150 Ind. 588 (Ind. 1898).

Opinion

Hackney, C. J.

David J. Mackey owned several parcels of real estate, estimated to be of the value of $200,000.00, upon which were certain judgment liens of about $13,000 in favor of parties not here interested. Mackey gave to the First National Bank, appellee, a mortgage on parts of said real estate, referred to, for convenience, as No. 1, for about $100,000. Thereafter he executed to one Cook, as trustee, a conveyance of the remaining parts of said real estate, which we will refer to as No. 2, the purpose of the trust being the sale of parcels included in No. 2, and the application of the proceeds to certain claims for a large sum owing to the Bank of Commerce, appellant. Still later the Bank of Commerce purchased the judgments mentioned. The trustee sold a large part of No. 2 and applied the proceeds to the claims of the appellant, other than said judgments. In a foreclosure proceeding instituted by the appellee, First National Bank, the question was made as to the rights of said appellee to require said judgments, so held by said appellant, to be made first from the property No. 2. The lower court held that they should be so enforced, and this appeal is from that holding.

The learned counsel for the appellant makes this concession: “Of course the general doctrine that where a creditor has access to two funds for the payment of his debts, and another creditor is confined to one of those funds, the dominant creditor will be compelled in the first instance to exhaust the fund upon which the other creditor has no security before resorting to the latter, is conceded.” It is practically con[590]*590ceded, also, that, in the hands of the original judgment creditors, equity might have enforced the lien of the judgments, for the appellee’s protection, against No. 2 alone.

In Bispham’s Principles of Equity, section 27, it is said: “The doctrine of marshaling grows out of the principle that a party having two funds to satisfy his demand shall not, by his election, disappoint a party who only has one fund. Thus, a party who has a mortgage on two parcels of land, ought not, in fairness, to resort in the first instance to one of them, upon which there also happens to be a junior mortgage which is not otherwise secured; for in so doing the junior mortgagee- might be altogether cut out. Equity, however, is loath to interfere with the rights of a creditor to enforce payment out of any of his securities, and therefore the remedy usually afforded to the junior disappointed mortgagee is to substitute him to the rights of the paramount mortgagee as against the other property.” The same proposition is announced and illustrated by the author in section 340, et seq., of the same work. In section 341 it is said that “the equity of marshaling would seem to be capable of being carried into effect in one of two ways, either, first by restraining the party against whom it exists from using a security to the injury of another, or, second, by giving the party entitled to the protection of this equity the benefit of another security in lieu of the one of which he has been disappointed. In other words, the right might be enforced either by injunction against the paramount creditor, or by subrogation in favor of the junior creditor.” In the ■ same section it is further said: “The rights of every1 one can be protected, and there is no harm in throwing the paramount creditor at once on the singly charged fund. So,, too, when the paramount creditor [591]*591has been guilty of some negligence or default, as where he has put one of the funds beyond his own reach with the full knowledge that his debt cannot be satisfied out of the other fund without injury to 'the interests of third persons, he may be restrained from coming in upon the second fund.”

In Fetter on Equity, p. 256, it is said “that a person having resort to two funds shall not by his choice disappoint another having one only. The practice adopted in the early days was to summarily forbid the creditor with two funds to touch that which was the sole resource of the other. The remedy by injunction is, however, rarely applied in modern times. The usual course is to permit the double creditor to enforce his claim as he pleases; but, if he chooses to resort to the only fund on which the other has a claim, that other is subrogated to all his rights against the fund to which otherwise he could not have resorted.”

In Jones on Liens, sections 1045, the same rules are stated, and wherever stated, are fortified by abundant authority.

One contention on behalf of the appellant is, that while the right to require enforcement of the judgment against No. 2 alone existed at all times, prior to the execution of the trust deed, after that time it did not exist; that the right was not fixed, but was inchoate and to be enforced only with reference to conditions existing at the time of enforcement. If this were true, the rule that subrogation was the more modern and approved remedy would be defeated, since subrogation depends upon the previous conduct of the dominant creditor, either in disregarding his duty to seek the property not covered by the junior lien, and in enforcing it against that upon which the junior lien rests, or, as said by Bispham, where he “has been guilty of some negligence or default.” The [592]*592theory of subrogation would be incomplete without the supposition thát the dominant creditor had either enforced his claim against the doubly burdened property, or had lost the right to pursue the property to which equity carries the junior lien in subrogation. The idea at the basis of the equity is that the dominant creditor, having otherwise ample security, shall not disappoint the junior creditor. Unless that which disappoints the junior creditor has been done there is nothing for which subrogation is awarded. To give the disappointed creditor “the benefit of another security in lieu of the one of which he has been disappointed,” necessarily implies that he has been placed in a position by the dominant creditor where his security is not available. Bispham says, section 342, that “the right of marshaling cannot be defeated by the intervention of creditors of a later date,” citing authority. We are convinced, therefore, that where, as in this case, a creditor takes a mortgage on property, it then being apparent that all prior liens can be fully paid from other porperty covered by them, the right to require such payment will continue and be protected as against such prior liens.

It is insisted, however, that the enforcement of the rule under the circumstances in this case is an injury to the appellant, now the dominant creditor by the purchase of the judgments, and that equity will not enforce the rule to the injury of a third person. As to the ownership of the judgments, we observe no stronger equity in the appellant than in the assignor, the original judgment creditor. Nor do we perceive that the trust deed added anything to the equities of the appellant, under the judgments, as against the appellee. Equity forbade the assignor of the judgments to enforce them so as to disappoint the appellee. In other words, good faith demanded that the [593]*593judgments should be enforced against No. 2, property encumbered only by their lien and ample to pay them. We know of no reason why this equity should be broken by the transfer of the judgments to another. The judgment creditor could perform no act affecting the equity in favor of the mortgagee. In the hands of the appellant the judgments have been held without enforcement, for the manifest purpose of pushing them over upon No. 1.

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Bluebook (online)
150 Ind. 588, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bank-of-commerce-v-first-national-bank-ind-1898.