Randall v. Lower

98 Ind. 255, 1884 Ind. LEXIS 545
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 14, 1884
DocketNo. 10,975
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 98 Ind. 255 (Randall v. Lower) 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
Randall v. Lower, 98 Ind. 255, 1884 Ind. LEXIS 545 (Ind. 1884).

Opinion

Elliott, C. J.

The material questions arise on the special ■finding. That finding is, substantially, this: Achilles Eddy died the owner of the land in controversy, leaving a widow and four children; in 1869 the widow married Luman Lob-dell; in August, 1874, Myron G. Eddy, a, son of Achilles Eddy, conveyed a one-fourth interest in the land to Lobdell, and Lobdell executed a mortgage to his grantor for the purchase-money; both the deed and the mortgage contained full covenants; at the time the conveyance was made Myron G. Eddy had no interest in the land except that inherited from his father and the contingent interest as the possible heir of his mother; in March, 1873, Eugene Eddy, another son, conveyed his interest, describing it as one-fourth, to Lobdell; in April of that year Myron G. Eddy assigned two of the purchase-money notes to the appellee, who instituted a suit of foreclosure against Lobdell and wife in September, 1878, and in which suit Lobdell filed an answer; pending that suit Harriet Eddy, a daughter of Achilles Eddy, conveyed her interest to the appellant; in 1878 an action for partition was commenced by the appellant against Lobdell and wife and George Eddy, a son of the intestate; the appellee was not a party to that suit; the foreclosure suit came on for trial in October, 1879, and a judgment was rendered foreclosing the mortgage on one-fourth of the land, and directing its sale; a sale was made and a deed was executed by the sheriff conveying it to the appellee; the judgment in the partition suit was that the land was indivisible, and a sale was ordered, at which [257]*257Randall, the appellant, became the purchaser; the widow Sarah died without having conveyed her interest. The conclusion of law stated is that the appellee, Lower, by virtue of the title derived from the deed of the sheriff, became the owner of one-fourth of the land, and that the appellant became the owner of three-fourths by virtue of the title acquired under the partition proceedings.

■The general rule is that where the mortgage contains full •covenants, and the mortgagor has at the time no title, or has a defective title, but subsequently acquires a perfect title, it will enure to the benefit of the mortgagee. 1 Jones Mortg., section 68; Thomas Mortg. 17; Rawle Cov. (4th ed.) 440. Our own decisions have adopted and applied this general rule to cases of conveyances by deed, and there is no reason why the 'rule should not apply to grants by way of mortgage. King v. Rea, 56 Ind. 1; Shumaker v. Johnson, 35 Ind. 33, vide opinion p. 38; Burton v. Reeds, 20 Ind. 87, see opinion p. 93.

The principle which underlies the ruléis the same whether the instrument be a deed or a mortgage. 3 Washb. R. P. (4th ed.), pp. 107, 118. The question here is whether the general rule applies, and whether it so operates as to fasten the mortgage upon the interest in the land owned by the mortgagor at the time it was executed, and also upon the estate subsequently vested in him by the death of his mother.

The principle upon which the general rule rests is that of equitable estoppel, and such an estoppel can never exist unless good conscience and equity require it in order to promote justice. Justice is not promoted, nor good conscience obeyed, by permitting a grantor, who has assumed to convey land to which he has no title, to insist that his grantee, in mortgaging the land back to him for the purchase-money, fastened the lien, not only upon the estate conveyed by the grantor’s deed, but also upon an estate subsequently acquired and from another source. It is not difficult to perceive and mark the difference between such a case and one in which the mortgagee [258]*258is not the grantor of the estate assumed to be mortgaged. A mortgagee who grants the property to the mortgagor, and yet has no title, breaks his own covenant, and by his own act, in assuming to grant what he does not own, lessens the estate which his grantee assumes to mortgage back to him, and is himself primarily in the wrong. It is covenant against covenant, and breach by both covenantors, but by one with fault, and by the other without fault. If the grantor had conveyed the estate he assumed to convey, there would have been no default on the part of the mortgagor; that there was default is due to the fact that the mortgagee, in granting the estate, did not grant what he professed to do, and thus misled the mortgagor. The latter would have owned all he assumed to mortgage if the mortgagee had not himself been in fault. The mortgage was made upon the faith of the representation contained in the deed of the mortgagee, and he can not reap any benefit from covenants, which his own representation justified the mortgagor in making, by extending the covenants to an estate derived from another source. It is not consistent with good conscience for a grantor to grasp after-acquired property where he himself assumed to vest all the title which hig mortgagor undertook to grant back to him by way of mortgage to secure the purchase-money; it is enough that the former gets back the estate he assumed to convey.

Our conclusion, that equity will not allow a grantor who receives back, in the same transaction, a mortgage for the purchase-money, to extend the lien of the mortgage to after-acquired property, is supported by the adjudged cases, but the decisions are placed upon somewhat different grounds. In the case of Brown v. Phillips, 40 Mich. 264, the court, in speaking of the effect of a purchase-money mortgage, said: “ On each occasion the mortgage was given simultaneously with the grant, and Drake’s seisin was only momentary. He acquired nothing more than the interests his grantors possessed, and his mortgages attach to nothing which he did not then own.” The authorities cited by the court, among them

[259]*2592 Blacks. Com. 131, 4 Kent Com. 38, Tyler on Infancy and Coverture, 526, taken in connection with the language of the opinion, indicate that much stress was laid upon the doctrine of instantaneous seisin, and it may be that where, as with us, the mortgage passes no title, but merely creates a lien, the seisin is more than instantaneous. This, however, does not weaken the force of the ruling; for the clear implication is that, so far as the quantity of the estate is concerned, both grantee and grantor meant that it should instantly pass back by way of mortgage to the grantor, and in this sense the seisin was instantaneous. It is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive that in such a transaction the parties intended that any other estate than the one momentarily in the grantee should go to the grantor by way of mortgage. In discussing a question much the same as that here under discussion, the Supreme Court of New Hampshire said: “The defendant sold the land; the plaintiff has only pledged it. For the sale, the defendant received a consideration. If his title was not perfect, he is bound to indemnify. It is he, and not the defendant, who is answerable for all defects and incumbrances which existed at the time of his deed. The seller, and not the purchaser, is bound to make good all deficiencies in the quality and title of the thing sold. If the purchaser instantly pledges the property to him, he pledges only what he has received from him, and is answerable for no defect in the property which existed before the sale.” Haynes v. Stevens, 11. N. H. 28. The same view was expressed in Smith v. Cannell,

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Bluebook (online)
98 Ind. 255, 1884 Ind. LEXIS 545, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/randall-v-lower-ind-1884.