Birmingham v. Maryland Land & Permanent Homestead Ass'n of Baltimore County

• Decision Date: 09 February 1877
• Citation: 45 Md. 541
• Parties: MARY J. BIRMINGHAM and ANDREW BIRMINGHAM v. THE MARYLAND LAND AND PERMANENT HOMESTEAD ASSOCIATION OF BALTIMORE COUNTY.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

45 Md. 541

MARY J. BIRMINGHAM and ANDREW BIRMINGHAM v. THE MARYLAND LAND AND PERMANENT HOMESTEAD ASSOCIATION OF BALTIMORE COUNTY.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

February 9, 1877

APPEAL from the Circuit Court of Baltimore City.

The appellants made a mortgage to the appellee, to secure the repayment of a loan. Default being made, a decree was passed for the sale of the mortgaged premises. The mortgagee afterwards filed a statement of its mortgage claim which was contested by the mortgagors. The Court below (PINKNEY, J.,) passed an order directing that unless the amount claimed to be due to the mortgagee as shown by its statement, was brought into Court by the mortgagors within a time specified to be paid to the mortgagee, the trustee should proceed to make sale of the mortgaged property upon the terms and in the manner as in the decree set forth. From this order the mortgagors appealed. The case is further stated in the opinion of the Court.

The cause was submitted to BARTOL, C.J., STEWART, BOWIE, GRASON MILLER, ALVEY and ROBINSON, J.

Luther M. Reynolds, for the appellants.

L P. D. Newman and B. C. Barroll, for the appellee.

MILLER J., delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question arising in this case is, whether the amount due on the mortgage from the appellants to the appellee, is correctly ascertained by the order appealed from, or whether the usury in the shape of a bonus of $250, and other excessive interest, stipulated for by the contract between the parties, should be eliminated therefrom?

The appellee insists, that the exaction of this bonus is legalized and made valid by the provisions of its charter the Act of 1868, ch. 427. By this Act certain named individuals and their successors are incorporated under the name of "The Maryland Land and Permanent Homestead Association of Baltimore County," and the purpose of the association is declared to be, "the purchase, improvement, sale and leasing of land, the borrowing of money, and the loaning of money to its members and others upon collateral securities, or upon mortgage of real or leasehold property, and to insure the lives of its members and debtors for the benefit of the association, whereby the security advanced upon may be in case of death secured to the family of the deceased." And by the eighth section it is provided "that it shall and may be lawful for the said association to loan money upon such interest as may be prescribed by law, for any period of time, and upon such premiums or bonus as may be agreed upon by the association and the borrower, and in all cases to deduct the interest and bonus, or either of them, in advance." It is a very grave question whether, under the provisions of the Constitution of this State, and especially the fifty-seventh section of the third Article, it is competent for the Legislature, by a special law, to confer upon a corporation like this the peculiar...