First Nat'l Bank of Mountain View v. Wilson
| Decision Date | 23 November 1915 |
| Docket Number | Case Number: 4896 |
| Parties | FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF MOUNTAIN VIEW v. WILSON et al. |
| Court | Oklahoma Supreme Court |
¶0 1. JUSTICES OF THE PEACE--Jurisdiction--Agister' 's lien under the statutes of this state.
2. CHATTEL MORTGAGES--Agister''s Lien--Priorities. The lien of a valid recorded chattel mortgage will take precedence over the subsequently acquired lien of a person furnishing feed to the owners of the animals embraced in said mortgage, unless such feed was furnished to the owner with the consent of the mortgagee.
3. SAME. The lien of a person who furnishes feed to the owner of certain animals with the knowledge and consent of a mortgagee is superior to the lien of said mortgage, although furnished after the filing thereof.
Error from County Court, Kiowa County; J. W. Mansell, Judge.
Action by Jennie D. Wilson against the First National Bank of Mountain View and others. Judgment for plaintiff, and the defendant named brings error. Affirmed.
Rummons & Logan, for plaintiff in error.
Thos. W. Conner, for defendant in error.
¶1 Defendant in error Wilson filed her complaint in a justice court of Kiowa county seeking to enforce an agister''s lien upon certain animals, alleged to be the property of one J. W. Hodges, and naming as one of the defendants there in the plaintiff in error, First National Bank of Mountain View. All of the defendants except Hodges and the bank made default; and on November 14, 1911, trial was had in the justice court, resulting in judgment for plaintiff and ordering the property sold to satisfy said lien. The bank appealed to the county court, where trial was had and judgment again rendered for plaintiff. Motion for new trial was filed and overruled, and the bank brings error.
¶2 Plaintiff alleged in her complaint that she had an account for feed furnished the defendant Hodges for the purpose of feeding said stock during a period of time from about April I to about September 1, 1911. This was admitted in the testimony at the trial in the county court, and no issue was made as to the correctness of her claim. The bank relied upon a chattel mortgage upon said stock, dated January 7, 1911, duly recorded and unsatisfied.
¶3 A preliminary objection is made by plaintiff in error to the jurisdiction of the justice court in the first instance, and of the county court on appeal, to enforce the lien claimed; it being contended that the proceeding is equitable in its nature, and that a justice of the peace is without equitable jurisdiction. There is no merit in this contention. The procedure for enforcing liens of this character is pointed out in chapter 3, art. 5, Wilson''s Ann. & Rev. Stat. 1903, being chapter 3, art. 4, Rev. Laws 1910.
¶4 The question here is whether the bank, under its mortgage, has a prior lien on said stock, or whether plaintiff Wilson, under chapter 3, Sess. Laws 1901, p. 43, has a prior lien thereon. Section 2 of said act is as follows:
"Any person or persons, partnership, firm or corporation within this territory, or in any border county of the adjacent states, furnishing or providing to the owner of such domestic animals any corn, feed, forage or hay, for the sustenance of such domestic animals, shall, for the amount due for such corn, forage, feed and hay, have a lien on said animals."
¶5 Section 3 of said act is as follows:
"All liens, not to exceed in the aggregate twenty-five per cent. of the value of such animals, against any domestic animal or animals for labor, grazing, herding, or feeding, or for corn, feed, forage or hay, furnished the owner of such domestic animals as herein provided, and actually used for such purpose, shall be prior to all other liens thereon, and no recital or stipulation in any mortgage or other incumbrance on any cattle so fed shall be held to supersede or vitiate the lien here provided for."
¶6 These sections are embraced in chapter 3, art. 5, of Wilson''s Rev. & Ann. Stat. 1903, and appear as sections 109 and 110 thereof.
¶7 Plaintiff contends that, under said section 3, her lien is paramount to that of defendant bank. This section of the statute was before the court in the case of National Bank of Commerce v. Jones, 18 Okla. 555, 91 P. 191, 12 L. R. A. (N. S.) 310, 11 Ann. Cas. 1041; and in construing the same Chief Justice Burford, for the court, held section 3 to be unconstitutional and void. Plaintiff says that said statute was only declared invalid so far as that particular case was concerned, because the mortgage there involved had become a valid lien almost three months before the act was adopted, and that said section, so far as rights thereafter acquired are concerned, is valid and still in force. Such, we think, is not true. The court did not seek to distinguish between the case under consideration and other cases, but in the third paragraph of the syllabus specifically held:
"An act of the Legislature which postpones an existing valid mortgage lien and makes a subsequently created lien superior to the mortgage lien is a law impairing vested property rights and impairing the obligations of a contract, and is void for conflict with the Constitution of the United States."
¶8 The section having been held void, it is not for us to say whether the conclusion of the court in that respect was correct.The contention was further made in that case that the lien for feeding and caring for the animal was superior to the mortgage. In denying this contention, the court called attention to the fact that the weight of authority was to the contrary, and in support of the statement of the rule by the court that the lien of a prior valid recorded chattel mortgage will take precedence over the subsequently acquired lien of a livery stable keeper or agister upon animals placed in his charge, unless such animals were delivered to the livery stable keeper or agister to be kept and cared for by him with the consent of the mortgagee, reference is made to the following cases: 19 Am. & Eng. Ency. Law (2d Ed.) 43...
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