Chapin v. Wright

• Decision Date: 19 August 1886
• Citation: 41 N.J.E. 438,5 A. 574
• Parties: CHAPIN v. WRIGHT and others.
• Court: New Jersey Court of Chancery

5 A. 574

41 N.J.E. 438

CHAPIN

v. WRIGHT and others.

Court of Chancery of New Jersey.

August 19, 1886.

On motion to strike out part of the defendant's answer. Heard on notice given pursuant to page 215 of the rules.

Benjamin A. Vail, for the motion.

Alan H. Strong, for defendants.

VAN FLEET, V. C. The complainant brings this suit to quiet her title to certain land. Her bill is filed under the act of 1870, (Revision, 1189.) Instead of simply alleging that she is in peaceable possession of the land in question as owner, she has given a full history of her title. It originated, as her bill states, in a mortgage made on the twenty-first day of June, 1830, by Lewis Wright and wife to Timothy Herbert, to secure the payment of $165 on the twenty-first day of June, 1831. The mortgage conveyed the fee. The mortgagee took possession of the mortgaged premises, under his mortgage, on the thirtieth day of April, 1836, and he, and his successors in title, have continued in possession ever since. Lewis Wright, the mortgagor, died intestate about 40 years ago. His heirs at law are the defendants to this suit. Four of them have appeared and answered, insisting that the land is still subject to their equity of redemption. Their claim in this regard rests upon the following facts: The complainant, on the thirty-first of October, 1885, made a contract to sell and convey the land, which contract required her, for the purpose of perfecting her title, to bring a suit, and obtain a decree of strict foreclosure against the heirs at law of the mortgagor. Such suit was subsequently brought, but was afterwards, on the seventeenth of March, 1886, and after the defendants had appeared to it, dismissed, on the complainant's own motion. The defendants insist that the institution of the suit to foreclose, taken in connection with the agreement making it the duty of the complainant to bring such suit, constituted such an admission of their right of redemption as amounted to a conclusive waiver of any bar to such right which previously existed.

The complainant moves to strike out that part of the answer which asserts that the defendants still have a right to redeem, on the ground that the matters there alleged are impertinent, and constitute no defense. On the admitted facts of the case, it is clear that the title which the complainant now holds was at one time subject to an equity of redemption, and it is equally certain that this equity was subsequently barred by lapse of time. The defendants admit that the person holding the mortgage executed in 1830 took possession, under his mortgage, of the land in question, in 1836, and that he, and those who succeeded to his rights, have continued in the uninterrupted possession of the land from that time up to October, 1885,—a period of over 49 years; and that during the whole of this long period neither the mortgagor, nor those standing in his rights, either exercised, or attempted to exercise, their right of redemption. They also admit that neither the mortgagee, nor those standing in his rights, did, at any time, during the same period, do or say anything which, either directly or indirectly, admitted or recognized that the land was subject to an equity of redemption. These admissions render it perfectly clear that, for a period of over 29 years prior to the thirty-first of October, 1885, the equity which the defendants now claim stood wholly barred and extinguished; for it is a principle of equity jurisprudence, authoritatively settled and universally recognized, that the laches and non-claim of the rightful owner of an equitable estate, who is under no disability, and in a case free from fraud, for a period of 20 years, will, where the person in possession has held adversely to such owner without in any way recognizing his right, constitute a conclusive bar to all right to equitable relief. In support of a principle so generally recognized, only a leading case or two need be cited: Cholmondeley v. Clinton, 2 Jac. & W. 1; S. C. on appeal, Id. 189; Elmendorf v. Taylor, 10 Wheat. 157.

This principle applies in all its force to the equity of redemption of a mortgagor. Twenty years' possession by a mortgagee of the mortgaged premises under his mortgage, without accounting to the mortgagor for rents or profits, or otherwise recognizing his mortgage as a subsisting lien, will, where the mortgagor is under no disability, bar his equity of redemption. Demarest v. Wynkoop, 3 Johns. Ch. 129; 2 Jones, Mortg. § 1144; Ang. Lim. § 456. Although there are but few statutes limiting the time within which equitable remedies must be enforced, yet courts of equity have, from the earliest times, given effect to lapse of time as a bar to the remedies which they administer; and they, as a general rule, measure the period of laches or non-claim which will be sufficient to bar an equitable action by the period fixed by the statute of limitations for the extinguishment of a similar right of action at law. And as 20 years' adverse possession will bar a right of entry, or an action of ejectment, courts of equity have, in analogy to the statute of limitations, adopted that as the period which shall be sufficient to bar an equity of redemption. This rule, however, is a mere judicial regulation. It is founded on the maxim, interest reipublicæ ut sit finis litium, and, like other judicial rules, is subject to change by the...