Stillwell v. Oliver

35 Ark. 184
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedNovember 15, 1879
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 35 Ark. 184 (Stillwell v. Oliver) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Stillwell v. Oliver, 35 Ark. 184 (Ark. 1879).

Opinion

Eakin, J.

On the fourth of March, 1868, E. Lockett executed to M. A. Lockett a writing obligatory for $11,834.,25 payable at twenty months, with interest; and at the same time, to secure the payment, executed to the payee a conveyance of certain lands in Arkansas county, “together with all stock of every description, farming implements, tools, wagons, drays, carts, etc.” The context sufficiently shows, that the personalty intended was all which was used upon, and considered as belonging to the place. The conveyance was to be void on payment. It was duly filed for record on the twentieth of April, 1868. A small credit of $200 appears indorsed upon the note, of March 26, (year not given), after which the name of M. A. Lockett is indorsed in blank. There is no formal assignment of the mortgage.

On the second of July, 1875, R. T. Oliver applied to the county judge for an interlocutory injunction, presenting this complaint, in which he sets forth the note and mortgage, and claims to be the legal owner, by assignment. He further says that he had instituted suit in the circuit court in chancery, on the seventeenth of May, for foreclosure, which suit is still pending.

Amongst charges against the administrator of E. Lockett not involved in the appeal,he complains that defendant, James Marks, on the seventeenth day of June, 1870, sued E. Lockett by attachment, in said court, upon a note, which attachment was levied upon a portion of the personal property included in the mortgage, consisting of certain mules and oxen, which were bonded by E. Lockett and the attachment released.- At the November term, judgment in that suit was rendered against Lockett, and the property which had been attached was condemned to be sold. An execution, issued upon this on the eighteenth of May, 1871, was returned, not executed. An alias, issued in 1872, was levied on a portion of the mortgaged property, but not returned. Another, issued on the second of June, 1875, in E. Lockett’s lifetime, was, on the third of June, after his death, levied on three mules, three oxen and a government wagon — a portion of the mortgaged property — but different, as complainant says, from the property attached. He charges that defendant, Stillwell, as sheriff, has advertised and is about to sell the property last taken in execution.

Defendant, Parker, is the administrator of E. Lockett, and is about to proceed to sell the mortgaged effects a part of his intestate’s estate, under order of the probate court. The bill seeks to enjoin these sales, and general relief.

The county judge directed the injunction to issue, as prayed; but the writ, as issued by the clerk, restrained the sheriff,' alone. Parker was- allowed to proceed and sell personal property of the estate, not embraced in the mortgage.

A demurrer to the bill was overruled, to which defendants excepted; and Marks, alone, answered.

He denied that the mortgage had been assigned to complainant, and relies upon the attachment and judgment of the circuit court in 1870, by which the attached property was ordered to be sold. He says that in 1872 he had execution issued against the attached property, so condemned ; upon which the sheriff took into his possession “certain” of it, and advertised it for sale. That M. A. Lockett sued for it in replevin before a justice of the peace, and upon trial said property was adjudged to be that of E. Lockett, and liable to the execution, which judgment was affirmed on appeal to the circuit court; all of which was before any assignment of the mortgage to complainant. Further, that on the second of June. 1875, he caused an alias execution to issue, for the seizure and sale of the attached property, which was levied on the said property, together with some other. He prays that the injunction be dissolved, and that the property be re-delivered to the sheriff, to be sold under the execution.

A demurrer to the answer was overruled.

Pending the suit it was, by consent, ordered that the property in the sheriff’s hands be sold, and the proceeds held.

The cause was heard upon the bill, answer and exhibits, and the Chancellor decreed that the injunction be made perpetual. Defendants appealed.

injunction agajn^t °xFaFetl0of

The personal property in the mortgage was described with sufficient certainty. It was capable of identification, so as, at least, to bind the mortgagor, or his general creditors. They can not have greater rights than he could have himself asserted. It might have been different with respect to bona -fide purchasers for value of any part of the mortgaged property, without notice that it constituted a portion of the property on the place when the mortgage was made; or with respect to subsequent mortgagees without such notice, advancing a new and valuable consideration.'

The grounds, however, for equitable interference by injunction, upon an independent bill are not clear. The mortgagee, or the assignee of the debt, which carried the mortgage with it, had the right, on default, to take possession of the property, or foreclose. He adopted the latter course, and whilst the suit was pending might, upon proper application, have had a receiver in that suit, and a restraining order against the sheriff', or any one seeking to take the property by execution. There was no necessity for a distinct bill, nor valid grounds for one, without showing some irreparable mischief from the levy and sale, for which ordinary legal remedies would be inadequate.

The universal jurisdiction which courts of equity assume in matters of trust is directed to their honest enforcement between trustees and cestuis que trustent and the protection of their mutual equities. Generally, a trustee with legal title is left, as against strangers, to the usual legal remedies to recover or protect the property. Courts of equity, on his application, will interfere to protect the trust property against tort-feasors, and save it from waste and loss, on the same grounds that it would, protect that of claimants in their own right — not mainly because there is a trustee in the case, but upon the ground of threatened mischief, for which there would he no other full, complete and adequate remedy. Equity, for instance, will not aid in getting in property held adversely by strangers to the trust, and for which the trustee might resort to the ordinary Code remedies, analogous to the common law actions of replevin, trover, detinue, debt, trespass, or case. This court held in Lovette v. Longmire, 14 Ark., 339, that the sale under execution of a slave, levied on as the property of another, would not be enjoined, where there was no allegation that they would thereby be placed beyond the reach of the law, nor anything to show that the true owner would be deprived of a full and adequate redress at law against the purchaser. This doctrine had never been applied, however, to articles having peculiar value, or pretium affectionis, and so much of the decision as applied to slaves, was afterwards overruled in Sanders v. Sanders, 20 Ark., 610, upon the express ground of the peculiar nature of slave property — as to which there, often, might be affections and predilections to gratify,’and always were duties to be performed by the master which entitled him to protection against improper seizure and sale.

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Bluebook (online)
35 Ark. 184, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stillwell-v-oliver-ark-1879.