Dartmouth Sav. Bank v. Bates

44 F. 546, 1890 U.S. App. LEXIS 1897
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Kansas
DecidedDecember 19, 1890
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 44 F. 546 (Dartmouth Sav. Bank v. Bates) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Dartmouth Sav. Bank v. Bates, 44 F. 546, 1890 U.S. App. LEXIS 1897 (circtdks 1890).

Opinion

Caldwell, J.

At the threshold of this case we are met with the question whether a judgment rendered in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Kansas is a lien on the lands of the judgment debtor outside of the county in which the court was held and the judgment rendered. The judgment that gave rise to this suit was rendered in the circuit court of the United States at Topeka, in Shawnee county, and the lands of the judgment .debtor upon which it is claimed the judgment was a lien are situated in Wabaunsee county. Land was not liable to be sold on execution at common law, and, as a consequence of this, at common law a judgment created no lien on the land -of the judgment debtor. The lien was created in England by the statute of Westminster 2, (13 Edw. I.) c. 18. 'This statute gave the elegit or writ of execution, which subjected real estate to the payment of debts. This statute did not, in terms, declare that a judgment should be a lien on the lands of the debtor, but the courts held that the effect of a statute subjecting lands to sale on execution was to make the judgment a lien on the lands of the debtor; and in this country state statutes subjecting land to sale on execution received the same construction, and were held to make judgments liens on the lands of the debtor within the territorial jurisdiction of the court rendering the judgment. Massingill v. Downs, 7 How. 766, and cases cited. The laws of the several states on the subject of judgment liens are not now, and never have been, uniform. By the laws of some states a judgment is not a lien on lands; in others it is a lien co-extensive with the territorial jurisdiction of the court. In some the lien takes effect from one date, and in others from another, and the duration of the lien is different in different states. No act of congress was ever passed declaring, in terms, that judgments [547]*547iu the federal courts should be liens, independently of the state law, on the judgment debtor’s lands. It is within the constitutional power of congress to make judgments in the federal courts liens on the debtor’s property, and to fix the territorial extent and duration of such liens, independently of state laws. But in this, as iu ail other matters relating to the practice and proceedings for obtaining and enforcing judgments in the federal courts, it lias always been the policy of congress to conform the processes in the federal courts to those in the state courts. In Ward v. Chamberlain, (2 Black, 430, 442, 443,) the supreme court said:

“I rnder the earlier process acts this court twice decided that the laws of the states furnished the rule of decision in respect to tiie lien of judgments and decrees rendered in the federal courts upon the land ol' the debtor; and since the passage of the act under consideration it 1ms been twice affirmed by this court as a matter of history that the act was passed to confirm the view expressed in those decisions. Beers v. Haughton, 9 Pet. 361; Ross v. Duval, 13 Pet. 64. Perfect coincidence of opinion upon the subject appears to imve prevailed throughout between congress and the court, and on all sides apparently the endeavor has been to assimilate the proceedings in the federal courts for the levying of executions issued on judgments and decrees for the payment of money to those prevailing in the courts of the states.”

In the same case the court said:

“'fhe course of legislation shows that it has always been the intention of congress to prevent a creditor suing in the federal courts from obtaining an advantage over another creditor suing in the state courts.” 2 Black, 441.

And it was early decided “that congress, in adopting the processes of the states, also adopted the modes of process prevailing at that date in the courts of the several states in respect to the lien of judgments within the limits of their respective jurisdictions.” Brown v. Pierce, 7 Wall. 217, and cases cited.

A question having arisen as to whether the adoption of the processes of the several stales adopted the state laws' on the subject of the duration of judgment liens, congress, on the 4th of July, 1840, passed an act on that subject, which is now section 967 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, and reads as follows:

“Sec. 967. Judgments and decrees rendered in a circuit or district court within any state shall cease to be liens on real estate or chattels real in the same manner and at like periods as judgments and decrees of the courts of such state cease by law to be liens thereon.”

Upon the passage of this act, the rule in the state and federal courts as to the creation and duration of a judgment lion was the same, — that is, the state laws regulated the creation and duration of the lieu of judgments in both courts, but the rule was not the same as to the territorial extent of such lion, and for this reason: In those states in which judgments were liens on the lauds of the debtor, the lien was restricted to the ienitoiial jurisdiction of the couit rendering the judgment, usually a county. But the statutes of those slates usually provided a mode of extending the lien of a judgment of a slate court to any county in the state by filing a transcript of the judgment in the county clerk’s office; [548]*548but those statutes, as a rule, did not make a like provision for filing and entering transcripts of federal judgments. If, therefore, in those states the lien of a judgment in a federal court was restricted to the county in which the court was held and tire judgment rendered, the suitor in the state court would have an advantage over the suitor in the federal court in the matter of the judgment lien, because, while the suitor in the state court could extend the lien of his judgment to any other county in the state by filing a transcript of it in the clerk’s office, the suitor in the federal court had no such right. In this condition of things the courts held that the lien of judgments in the federal courts was, by analogy to the state laws, eo-extensive with the territorial jurisdiction of such courts. Den v. Jones, 2 McLean, 78; Massingill v. Downs, 7 How. 760; Brown v. Pierce, 7 Wall. 217; Williams v. Benedict, 8 How. 107; Barth v. Makeever, 4 Biss. 210; Trapnall v. Richardson, 13 Ark. 543; Byers v. Fowler, 12 Ark. 218.

In Massingill v. Downs, supra, the court said:

“In those states where the judgment or the execution of a state court creates a lien only within the county in which the judgment is entered it has net been doubted that a similar proceeding in the circuit court of the United States would create a lien to the extent of its jurisdiction. This has been the practical construction of the power of the courts of the United States, .-^whether the lien was held to be created by the issuing of process or by the express statute. Any other construction would materially affect, and in some degree subvert, the judicial power of the Union. It would place suitors in the state courts in a much better condition than in the federal courts.”

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Bluebook (online)
44 F. 546, 1890 U.S. App. LEXIS 1897, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/dartmouth-sav-bank-v-bates-circtdks-1890.