McCoy v. First National Bank

50 Iowa 577

• Court: Supreme Court of Iowa
• Decided: April 23, 1879
• Status: Published

Opinion

Eothrock, J.

l. damages: with sale. The wrongful acts complained of, and which are the basis of the plaintiff’s cause of action, are that defendants prevented the sale of the real estate by publicly announcing that the same should not be sold, and that parties purchasing would buy a law-suit. It is not averred that the agents of the defendants slandered the title of the plaintiff by asserting or claiming that the defendants had any interest in the land other than as the owners of the mortgages thereon. It is averred that the sale was intended for the very purpose of paying off these mortgages. If so, persons intending to purchase must have been advised of the terms of the sale, and of the liens upon the land necessary to be discharged in order to make good title. Indeed, it is fair to assume that persons intending to purchase would have ascertained the condition of the title as it appeared of record. With'this knowledge, which must have been acquired in one way or the other, the idle and gratuitous threats of the agents of the defendants would have no influence with a party who was ready to bid for the real estate some nine thousand •dollars more than sufficient to pay all the indebtedness due to the defendants. There was no necessity for the defendants’ assent to the sale. It.was plaintiff’s undoubted right to sell the land at any time or in any manner before foreclosure, so that he made provision for the payment of the amounts due on the mortgages, and how the defendants could, by declaring that a sale should not take place, influence purchasers not to bid an amount largely in excess of sufficient to pay the mortgages, is more than we are able to determine.

It will be observed that it is averred that parties were present who would have purchased the real estate for a sum much larger than the amount of the mortgages. If this estimate of what persons would have paid for property at a public auction is a fact susceptible of proof, and which may be the foundation of an action for damages, a point not necessary to be determined in this case, yet it cannot be said that they were prevented from purchasing by the alleged acts of the defendants. If they were thus prevented, it seems to us that fact would be rather too remote to become the foundation of a suit for damages.

Affirmed.