Forsyth v. Pierson

• Decision Date: 17 January 1882
• Citation: 9 F. 801
• Parties: FORSYTH and another v. PIERSON and others.
• Court: United States Circuit Court, District of Indiana

9 F. 801

FORSYTH and another v. PIERSON and others.

United States Circuit Court, D. Indiana.

January 17, 1882

J. R Doolittle, Jr. and McDonald & Butler, for complainants.

Baker Hord & Hendricks, for intervening petitioners.

Grant Swift & Bradley, for defendants.

GRESHAM D.J.

The complainants filed their bill of complaint against the defendants on the eleventh day of November, 1881, to enforce their right to redeem certain real estate, situated in Indiana, from a mortgage, both of which are described in the bill. At the same time the East Chicago Improvement Company filed its intervening petition setting up that it was the owner of the mortgaged premises by mesne conveyances from the complainants, who were the mortgagors, and that it desired to make various permanent and expensive improvements upon the premises, which could not be made while the mortgage remained upon the property. The petitioner paid into court $75,000 which, added to $135,000 already paid in by the complainants, was, the petitioner averred, more than sufficient to pay the amount that was claimed to be due upon the mortgage. The prayer of the intervening petition was that the lien of the mortgage should be transferred from the lands to the fund in the registry of the court, and that the mortgagees should be decreed to enter satisfaction of their mortgage.

At the time the bill and intervening petition were filed, J. R. Doolittle, Jr., Esq., one of the complainants' solicitors, filed his affidavit describing the complainants' cause of action, and stating that John O. Pierson, one of the defendants, was a resident of the city of Chicago and state of Illinois; that the Continental Life Insurance Company was a citizen of the state of Connecticut, and that certain other defendants were citizens of Boston, in the state of Massachusetts; that neither said non-resident defendants, nor either of them, could be found in the district of Indiana, nor did they, or either of them, voluntarily appear to the complainants' bill of complaint. On the information contained in this affidavit the court entered an order that the defendants named in the affidavit appear and plead, answer or demur, to the bill and intervening petition on or before the seventh day of December, 1881, and that a copy of the order should be served upon each of such defendants. Certified copies of this order and the bill of complaint and intervening petition were served upon the Continental Life Insurance Company in Connecticut, on the sixteenth day of November, 1881, by the marshal for the district of Connecticut.

Samuel C. Hays, in an affidavit in which he describes himself as deputy United States marshal for the northern district of Illinois, swore that he made similar service on John P Pierson on the same day. And B. B. Johnson made affidavit of similar service at Boston on the seventeenth day of November, 1881, on the defendants, who were citizens of that place, describing himself as deputy marshal for that district. Mr. Johnson also indorsed the usual return of...