Flanagin v. Hambleton

54 Md. 222, 1880 Md. LEXIS 86
CourtCourt of Appeals of Maryland
DecidedJune 30, 1880
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 54 Md. 222 (Flanagin v. Hambleton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Flanagin v. Hambleton, 54 Md. 222, 1880 Md. LEXIS 86 (Md. 1880).

Opinion

Irving, J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question, for decision in this case, arises upon the auditor’s reports distributing the proceeds of sale of certain real estate made under a decree of the Circuit Court for Talbot County, sitting in equity. In the appeal of Mary J. Johnson vs. Samuel Hambleton, Trustee, et al., 52 Md., 318, the same point, which is made now, was made as an objection to the ratification of the sale, which was then under review, hut was not regarded by the Court as essential to the proper decision of the question there presented, and was not, therefore, decided. In pursuance of the decree of this Court the sale was ratified, and this contest is on the right to the balance of the purchase money in the hands of the trustee after paying the first liens. At the hearing all other objections were waived, except the one affecting the right of the Easton Bank to claim the fund as against the appellant. The appellant claims the fund as the mortgagee of the land. The appellee claims on the ground that appellant’s mortgage, and the bond which the mortgage secured, were assigned to the Bank as collateral security for a certain note of the appellant’s husband and others, which has .not been paid, and will not he paid, (even in part) unless these collaterals are liable for it. The record, in [225]*225the former case has, by agreement, been made a part of the record in this, and from the proofs there detailed, we learn that the appellant’s husband, James S. Elanagin, in December, 1872, applied to the Easton National Bank for a loan. The appellant had certain mortgages, including the one now in controversy. Eor the purpose of enabling her husband to raise money on them, she endorsed the bonds and mortgages in her own handwriting in blank, and handed them to her husband, James S. Elanagin. Not desiring to buy the bonds and mortgages outright, the Bank agreed with James S. Elanagin, that it would loan him the money he desired, on his note and two other joint makers who were named, and the deposit of the bond and mortgage in question, as collateral security for the payment of the note. This was agreed upon; and a note for seven thousand dollars, payable six months after date, to the President and Directors of the Easton National Bank, payable at the National Bank of North America, Philadelphia, was drawn, dated the sixteenth of December, 1872, and was signed by James S. Elanagin, E. D. Johnson and H. Thompson. This note was discounted for James S. Elanagin, and he deposited the bond and mortgage with the Bank, and as attorney in fact, for his wife, assigned the mortgage formally on the record to the Easton Bank, and on the original mortgage, over the signature of Mrs. Elanagin, was written an assignment to the Bank of the mortgage and mortgage debt. Shortly before this note became due, Elanagin requested the same should be renewed with the same makers, and the retention of the same collaterals. His request was agreed to, but as a preliminary to the renewal, and as an additional condition of it, the Bank required that James S. Elanagin should procure the note from the Bank in Philadelphia, and bring it to the Easton Bank, and when so brought, the renewal would be completed. This was done.

[226]*226The last day of grace on the note, was the 19th of June, 1872. On the 23rd day of June, the renewal note was discounted, and the collaterals, already described, were, pursuant to the agreement, retained by the Bank as security for the new note, which was signed by the same makers, and was made payable, as the first, in Philadelphia. At the end of every six months thereafter, the note was renewed, and the collaterals retained until the month of March, 1876, when the note laid over unpaid. All the renewals, after the first one, recited the fact of its being a renewal, and also recited the fact, that the col-laterals, now in controversy, were held by the Bank, as security for the payment of the note.

The Bank has always retained possession of the bond and mortgage, since the making of the first note, as collateral security for the payment of it, and the successive renewals, without any denial of their right of possession, under the arrangement with James S. Elanagin, until the exceptions to the audit.

The appellant insisted before the Court below, and insists here, that the taking up of the first note by James S. Elanagin, in Philadelphia, was a payment of it; and that the arrangement for a renewal, and the subsequent discounting by the Bank of the new note, pursuant to agreement, did not make the new note a renewal; and that consequently the collaterals were released—that thereafter the Bank had no claim on them, and, therefore, the audit allowing the Bank the fund applicable to that bond and mortgage was erroneous. If the appellant’s proposition was sound, under the peculiar facts of this case, still it would not necessarily control the decision of the case; for the whole question of the effect of the conduct of the appellant with reference to these collaterals, under the influence of which the Bank has acted in first discounting and then in its renewal, would still he open.

But does the rule as it has been laid down by appellant’s counsel reach so far as to prevent the transaction in this [227]*227case being regarded by a Court of equity as a renewal ? There can he no doubt, that ordinarily, the effect of a renewal is to pay the old note, even though the old note remains in the hank untaken up and uncancelled in fact, as is often the case. It is merely a dispensing with the actual payment of the money and taking up or cancelling the old note, and the immediate loan of the same money to the borrower. It is so regarded for the purpose of carrying into effect the intentions of the parties to the transaction. 2 Parsons on Bills and Notes, 203; U. S. Bank vs. Georgia, 10 Wheaton, 333; Slaymaker vs. Gundacker, 10 S. & R., 75. The meaning of all this is, that the Bank in some shape furnishes the money to pay fhe note. When the new note takes the place of the old and cancels it, it is only a substitution of this method for ■the actual payment over the counter, and the immediate loan of the money again by a discount of the new note. It only dispenses with formality to carry out the intent of the parties. It is hard to perceive how the taking of the money and handing it back at once can make any difference in the transaction. The favor done by the Bank is ■the same in either case. In either case it is a renewal, if it is so intended. It is the intent of the parties and their understanding of it which makes it a renewal. 2 Parsons on Bills and Notes, 203 and 204. The word “ renewal ” has no legal or strictly technical signification. Whether a note is a renewal of another note, adjudged cases say ■depends entirely upon the intention of the,parties. Gault vs. McGrath, 8 Casey, 397; Russell vs. Phillips, 68 E. C. L., 900; Hacker vs. Perkins, 5 Wharton, 511.

The broad statement of the law, that when a note is paid by funds not the proceeds of a new note discounted, the new note is not a renewal,” as stated in the syllabus of Judge Lowbie’s decision in Hartley vs. Kirlin, et al., 45 Penn., 49, on which the appellant rests her case, must be taken with some qualification, or else the Very princi[228]*228pie on which the doctrine of payment by renewal restsy will be uprooted, and the intention of parties respecting the transaction made of none effect. What Judge Low-.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
54 Md. 222, 1880 Md. LEXIS 86, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/flanagin-v-hambleton-md-1880.