Title Guaranty Trust Co. v. Sessinghaus

28 S.W.2d 1001, 325 Mo. 420, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 585
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedJune 3, 1930
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 28 S.W.2d 1001 (Title Guaranty Trust Co. v. Sessinghaus) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Title Guaranty Trust Co. v. Sessinghaus, 28 S.W.2d 1001, 325 Mo. 420, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 585 (Mo. 1930).

Opinions

The defendant William Sessinghaus obtained a judgment for about $8,800 against the P.B. Mathiason Manufacturing Company, a Missouri corporation, in the St. Louis City Circuit Court, in October, 1920. The judgment remaining unpaid, some five years later, in February, 1926, he caused an execution to be issued directed to the defendant Anton Schuler as sheriff. The latter levied on the real estate in controversy in the instant case as the property of said Mathiason Company, and advertised the execution sale for April 1, 1926. The plaintiff Title Guaranty Trust Company thereupon brought this suit to enjoin the sale, claiming to be sole owner of the property as grantee of the purchaser thereof at a foreclosure sale held in March, 1921, under a deed of trust theretofore given by the Mathiason Company to it, the plaintiff, in January, 1919, before the defendant Sessinghaus had obtained his judgment.

The ultimate questions for decision are whether the deed of trust and foreclosure were valid. The court below held they were and perpetually enjoined the sale. The defendant Sessinghaus has appealed; the defendant sheriff has not. The principal contentions made by the appellant are: (1) that the foreclosure should be held invalid because the respondent failed to show the conditions of the deed of trust had been breached, and because the trustee named therein was not disinterested, but a subsidiary corporation of the respondent and under its control; (2) that the deed of trust was void, because its execution by the Mathiason Company was ultra vires, in that part of the consideration therefor was the purchase of certain other land hereinafter called the Mayer property which the company had no right to buy; and that if the deed of trust was not wholly void, at least an accounting should be taken and all payments made on the debt secured should be credited to the valid part of the indebtedness, which would give the Mathiason Company an equity in the real estate involved in this suit subject to sale under respondent's execution.

The evidence shows the Mathiason Company was incorporated under the laws of Missouri in August, 1896, with a full paid capital of $100,000, for the purpose of manufacturing "fertilizers, glue and any or all other kinds of products made from animal bones or other animal matter" . . . and "to rent, lease, buy, sell, hold and own *Page 424 real estate [and] to make, build, buy, sell, hold and own machinery." The company established a factory at St. Louis on the parcels of land described in the petition, consisting of nearly one entire block, and equipped it with buildings, machinery and other equipment for carrying on its business. The title to said land and equipment was, on January 8, 1919, vested in the company free from encumbrance. On that date the respondent Title Guaranty Trust Company was the owner of certain adjoining real estate which it had acquired from the Mayer Fertilizer Company.

On December 28, 1918, the Mathiason Company negotiated a lease of its factory and equipment to Wilson Co., for occupancy and use in the manufacture of glue and fertilizer. The lease was for a term of two years, beginning on February 15, 1919, with the right of renewal for one year, and called for a rental in the nature of a royalty of two and a half cents per pound on all finished glue manufactured by the lessee on the leased premises, the annual rental to be not less, however, than $18,700, payable $1558.33 on the 15th day of each month, beginning on March 15, 1919. The lessor obligated itself to set aside out of the annual rental the sum of $5,000 for application, at the direction of the lessee, to extensions, improvements and repairs, and to pay all taxes and other liens and the cost of insurance on the demised premises.

After the negotiation of the foregoing lease the deed of trust involved in this suit was executed, dated January 8 and acknowledged January 16, 1919, along with a chattel mortgage or deed of trust covering the machinery and other like equipment of the Mathiason Company. Both secured the payment of a note for $95,000 of even date. The note did in fact, as appellant contends, cover the purchase price of the Mayer property which was contemporaneously conveyed by or at the direction of the respondent Title Guaranty Trust Company to the Mathiason Company for a consideration of $35,000; and the Mayer property was included in the deed of trust. As a further consideration for the note and deed of trust the respondent advanced to the Mathiason company $60,376.45 in money, which amount the bank records show was paid by the latter a week later to another concern called the National Glue Company.

The principal of the $95,000 note was payable in monthly installments of not less than $500 on the first day of every month after date during the period of the aforesaid Wilson lease. On the expiration of the lease the balance then remaining was to be paid in equal monthly installments so that the whole note should be satisfied within ten years from date. The note bore interest at the rate of six per cent per annum, payable monthly from date on the entire indebtedness or so much thereof as might from time to time remain unpaid. The deed of trust authorized foreclosure on default for three consecutive months in the payment of principal *Page 425 or interest as called for by the note, and conferred a power of sale in that event on the trustee, the American Trust Company. The instrument likewise contained an assignment to the trustee of all rents, issues, profits and income accruing from the property encumbered.

In harmony with this provision of the deed of trust and contemporaneously with its execution, apparently, on January ____, 1919, the Mathiason Company indorsed on its lease to Wilson Co., with the latter's written consent, an assignment to the American Trust Company of all rents, issues, income and profits accruing to it under the lease or any extension thereof.

Also, at the same time we take it, on January 16, 1919, the Mathiason Company entered into a written contract with the American Trust Company, referring to the execution of the Wilson lease and the deed of trust, and to the fact that by the deed of trust the revenues derived under the lease were assigned to the American Trust Company as trustee. Next appears a recital as to how the annual rentals must be applied under the requirements of the two instruments, viz.: $5,000 annually to betterments; $500 per month or $6,000 per year to the principal of the note secured; interest payable monthly; taxes and insurance. The contract then sets out an agreement as to what shall be done if the rentals under the lease prove insufficient to meet the foregoing requirements and what if there is a surplus. It is enough here to say the Mathiason Company and Roy Morgan, its president, agreed to make up any deficiency.

Passing on to the issue concerning the payments made on the $95,000 note. The respondent's secretary, Mr. Gottlieb, testified as a witness for plaintiff. He identified the various instruments heretofore mentioned and said if the stipulated $500 payments had been made monthly on the principal of the note, the amount due on February 1, 1921, would have been $83,000, whereas the payments actually made during this period reduced the note only to $88,000, thereby leaving a deficiency of $5,000, representing an arrearage of ten monthly payments. This testimony is borne out by the note itself. As introduced in evidence the credits on the back show twelve $500 payments and one $1000 payment, making $7,000. If $500 had been paid on the first day of each month, beginning on February 1, 1919, and ending January 1, 1921, thus going to but not including February 1, 1921, there would have been twenty-four such payments, amounting to $12,000.

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Bluebook (online)
28 S.W.2d 1001, 325 Mo. 420, 1930 Mo. LEXIS 585, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/title-guaranty-trust-co-v-sessinghaus-mo-1930.