Home Fire Insurance v. Dutcher

67 N.W. 766, 48 Neb. 755, 1896 Neb. LEXIS 130
CourtNebraska Supreme Court
DecidedJune 2, 1896
DocketNo. 8478
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 67 N.W. 766 (Home Fire Insurance v. Dutcher) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Nebraska Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Home Fire Insurance v. Dutcher, 67 N.W. 766, 48 Neb. 755, 1896 Neb. LEXIS 130 (Neb. 1896).

Opinion

Irvine, C.

The Home Fire Insurance Company instituted an action in the district court of Douglas county to foreclose [756]*756a mortgage executed by Warren Dntcber on premises which he afterwards conveyed to defendant A. J. Butcher. The petition contained allegations to the effect that the present value of the premises is less than the mortgage indebtedness; that taxes on the premises to a large amount have been suffered to become delinquent, and that waste was being committed. There was a prayer for a receiver pendente lite. The district court, upon hearing evidence on the application for a receiver, sustained said application and appointed, a receiver for the premises. From this order the defendants have appealed. The district court, at the time of making the order, fixed the amount of the supersedeas bond at $500, and within the statutory period the defendants entered into a bond in that sum conditioned according to the third subdivision of section 677 of the Code of Civil Procedure. This subdivision is as follows: “When the judgment, decree, or order directs the sale or delivery of possession of real estate, the bond shall be in such sum as the court or judge thereof in vacation shall prescribe, conditioned that the appellant or appellants will prosecute such appeal without delay and will not, during the pendency of such appeal, commit or suffer to be committed any waste upon such real estate.” A motion was made to strike this bond from the files on the grounds, first, that there is no authority in law for superseding an order appointing a receiver pendente lite; and second, that if such an order may be superseded, the bond should be conditioned to pay the reasonable rental value of the property pending appeal. This motion the court sustained., and an application having been made by the receiver for a writ of assistance, the appellants made application to this court for an order restraining the district court and the receiver from taking any further steps pending the appeal.

The primary question presented is that stated as the first ground of the motion to strike the bond from the files, to-wit: Is there any authority for superseding an [757]*757order appointing a receiver pendente lite? In considering tlie application we are, therefore, not reviewing the order striking the bond from the flies, because, if an order appointing a receiver can be superseded as a matter of right, it must be under the third subdivision of section 677, as that is the only provision which could possibly apply to such a case. In such event the filing and approval of the bond operated as a supersedeas and the order striking the bond from the files was a nullity. If, on the other hand, there is no authority for a supersedeas in such a case, the bond itself was a nullity and the district court had authority to proceed in disregard of such bond. The question so presented is by no means free from difficulty. A supersedeas is now almost everywhere so much controlled by statute, and the statutes are so different in their provisions, that but little assistance can be had from the adjudications of other states. After a severe struggle it became established in England that an appeal of itself operated as a supersedeas. Following the analogy of this practice, it is held in some states that statutes providing special conditions, such as the giving of a bond, in order to effect a supersedeas are merely restrictive in their character, and that the appeal itself works a supersedeas where there is no statute requiring a bond or a compliance with other conditions. A different doctrine has, however, been announced in this state; and it must be accepted as the established rule here that a supersedeas can be had as a matter of right only where it is affirmatively provided for by statute. (Gandy v. State, 10 Neb., 243; State v. Judges, 19 Neb., 149; State v. Meeker, 19 Neb., 444; Cooperrider v. State, 46 Neb., 84.)

Owing to this difference between the rule on the subject in this state and the rule in many others, as well as the very broad differences between our statute and most others, the cases cited on behalf of the appellants have little or no application to that before us. Thus, State v. Johnson, 13 Fla., 33, was based on statutes making the [758]*758allowance of a supersedeas in all cases a matter of discretion. Everett v. State, 28 Md., 190, was based on a statute quoted in Blondheim v. Moore, 11 Md., 365, expressly providing tbe terms of a supersedeas in sucb cases. Northwestern Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Park Hotel Co., 37 Wis., 125, was based on a construction of a statute providing for supersedeas bonds in certain cases, followed by a provision fixing tbe terms of tbe bond in “all other cases.” Tbe court beld tbis general provision applicable to orders appointing receivers, by virtue of tbe doctrine already mentioned as prevailing in some places that an appeal itself is a supersedeas unless a statute in a particular case requires some further condition to be complied with, or denies tbe right. That tbis is tbe Wisconsin doctrine appears more clearly perhaps from tbe case of Hudson v. Smith, 9 Wis., 122. Elliot v. Whitmore, 10 Utah, 238, seems to have been based on a statute like ours, and is, therefore, more nearly in point. In that case tbe defendant was in possession of a stream and bad appropriated tbe water by means of a ditch to bis own use. Tbe plaintiff! obtained a decree entitling him to tbe use of a part of tbe water, enjoining tbe defendant from using that portion awarded tbe plaintiff, and appointing a commissioner to put into tbe stream a certain device which would make a partition of tbe water in tbe proportions decreed. It was beld that tbe case fell within a statute identical with subdivision 3 of section 677 of our Code, and that the decree was superseded by a bond thereunder, tbe decree in effect directing tbe delivery of possession of real estate. It seems to us that tbe court thereby gave an exceedingly liberal construction to tbis provision. But there is tbis difference between tbe case cited and that before us, that in tbe Utah case tbe decree was final, and considered as an order for tbe delivery of possession of real property, it was an order for a final and perpetual delivery to tbe adverse party; while in tbe case before us tbe possession of property is not ordered delivered finally to tbe plaintiff, but to an officer of tbe court, to bold tbe same on be[759]*759half of all parties to the suit as their rights may ultimately be determined, and as a provisional remedy only. This distinction will be later adverted to.

In Swing v. Townsend, 24 O. St., 1, the action was for the construction of a will, an order to sell real estate, and for distribution. Receivers were appointed in the court below. An appeal having been taken from the decree, the supreme court held that the appeal did not supersede the receivership and that the powers and duties of the receivers continued notwithstanding. It would seem, however, from Eaton & H. R. Co. v. Varnum, 10 O. St., 622, that an order appointing a receiver was not at that time in Ohio an appealable order, as it is made here by section 275 of the Code of Civil Procedure. In the Matter of the Real Estate Associates, 58 Cal., 356, it was held that an appeal from an order adjudicating insolvency and appointing a receiver did not suspend the functions of the receiver, the court saying: “For obvious reasons it would be dangerous to hold that the functions of the receiver are suspended during the appeal.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
67 N.W. 766, 48 Neb. 755, 1896 Neb. LEXIS 130, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/home-fire-insurance-v-dutcher-neb-1896.