Hammond v. Gordon

• Decision Date: 28 November 1887
• Citation: 93 Mo. 223,6 S.W. 93
• Parties: HAMMOND v. GORDON and others.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

6 S.W. 93

93 Mo. 223

HAMMOND v. GORDON and others.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

November 28, 1887.

1. EXECUTION — WHAT SUBJECT TO — INTEREST IN PUBLIC LAND.

Hammond v. Johnston, ante, 83, followed.

2. SAME — SHERIFF'S DEED — PRESUMPTION OF REGULARITY FROM LAPSE OF TIME.

A sheriff's deed was offered in evidence, but was excluded on the ground that it showed no impression of a seal. The certificate of acknowledgment concluded as follows: "Given under my hand and seal of office at St. Louis, this twenty-seventh day of January, 1824," and was signed by the clerk. A certified copy, made 10 years before the suit was begun, indicated that the record showed a seal. By the law in force when the deed was made, it was the duty of the clerk to indorse upon the deed the acknowledgment under the seal of the court. Held, where the parties had been in possession, under the deed, for 40 years, it would be presumed that the seal was attached.

3. SAME — CERTIFIED COPY AS EVIDENCE.

A certified copy of a sheriff's deed, offered as evidence, was excluded on the ground that the original had not been accounted for. Held, that the copy was primary evidence, and it was error to exclude it; following Hammond v. Johnston, ante, 83.¹

4. SAME — SUFFICIENCY OF DESCRIPTION.

Hammond v. Johnston, ante, 83, followed.

Appeal from court of appeals of St. Louis.

J. B. Henderson, Jas. M. Lewis, and Frank J. Donovan, for appellants. D. T. Jewitt, for respondent.

BLACK, J.

The titles of the respective parties to this suit in ejectment are the same as in the cause of Hammond v. Johnston, ante, 83, just decided. The judgment of the circuit court was, however, in this case for the plaintiffs, and defendants appealed. In this case the defendants offered in evidence a certified copy of the sheriff's deed to Ralf & Chew, dated fourth November, 1823, based on a sale made on the eighth October, 1823, under an execution against Samuel Hammond. The copy was objected to, on the ground that the original had not been accounted for. The court sustained the objection, and the copy was excluded. The copy, like the original, was primary evidence, and the court erred in excluding it. This question was sufficiently considered in the case just mentioned. The defendants then offered in evidence the original deed, to which plaintiff objected: First, because the clerk of the St. Louis circuit court had not attached the seal of the court to his certificate of acknowledgment indorsed on the deed; second, because the deed was void for uncertainty in the description of the premises. These objections were sustained, and the deed excluded. The second of these objections was considered in the case before cited, and it only remains to consider the first.

The certificate of acknowledgment, as it appears from the certified copy, is formal, and concludes as follows:

"Given under my hand and seal of office at St. Louis, this twenty-seventh

                day of January, 1824.        [Seal.]        ARCHIBALD GAMBLE, Clerk."
                

The certificate of acknowledgment indorsed on the original is the same, except that it does not show a seal of the court. We have held on several occasions that the recorder is not required to copy the seal made by the officer taking the acknowledgment, and that a statement in the body of the certificate, as shown by the copy, that the officer who made it affixed the seal of the court or of his office, authorizes the presumption that the seal was affixed. Geary v. City of Kansas, 61 Mo. 379; Norfleet v. Russell, 64 Mo. 177; Addis v. Graham, 88 Mo. 199; Parkinson v. Coplinger, 65 Mo. 290. Presumptions are constantly made in support of official acts of public officers, Stephens, in his Digest of the Law of Evidence, (article 101,) states the rule broadly as follows: "When any judicial or official act is shown to have been done in a manner substantially regular, it is presumed that formal requisites for its validity were complied with." The same author, at article 87, gives this additional rule: "When any document, purporting to be...