Collins v. Riggs

• Decision Date: 01 December 1871
• Citation: 81 U.S. 491,20 L.Ed. 723,14 Wall. 491
• Parties: COLLINS v. RIGGS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

81 U.S. 491

20 L.Ed. 723

14 Wall. 491

COLLINS v. RIGGS.

December Term, 1871

IN this case, Riggs had brought ejectment in the court below against Collins to recover a lot, one of the several ones mentioned in the preceding case as having been mortgaged by Russell to the United States, and bought by Corcoran from the United States after the foreclosure by the government of their mortgage and the purchase in by them of all the several lots included in it. Riggs was the grantee of Corcoran.

The lot in controversy in this case, like that in controversy in the preceding case, had been conveyed previously to the mortgage, by a deed not put on record, to Breese.

On the trial, the defendant made the same objections to Riggs's title, that in the preceding case he had made to Morris's; to wit, that Breese, as grantee of Russell, of the lot, prior to the date of the mortgage to the United States, and so owner of the equity of redemption, had not been brought into the foreclosure suit; and assuming this to be true the defendant inferred and assumed that the mortgage was still, therefore, in existence. He then offered to prove that during the pendency of the present suit in ejectment he had tendered to Riggs the amount for which this particular lot now in controversy had been struck off at the marshal's sale, together with the taxes, interest, and costs; informing the plaintiff at the time of this tender that he, the defendant, was willing to treat him, the plaintiff, as the equitable assignee of so much of the mortgage as had been paid at the sale for the land in controversy, and that he wished to redeem the said land, and that he, the defendant, made the tender for that purpose; which tender the plaintiff declined to receive; the defendant offering to prove, further, that the said sum of money was then paid into court as a tender to redeem the land in controversy from the mortgage.

The court below decided, simply, that the evidence as presented was not competent or sufficient to constitute a defence to the action, but upon what ground this decision was made did not appear.

Mr. B. C. Cook, for the plaintiff in error (iterating and enforcing, as to the other parts of the case, the arguments of Mr. Fuller, already presenced in the report of the preceding case) argued upon this new point that Breese not having been brought in, and the mortgage being so still in existence, Corcoran was but an assignee of part of it, and Riggs his assignee, nothing more; that ...