Ives v. Beecher

• Decision Date: 04 March 1903
• Citation: 75 Conn. 564,54 A. 207
• Parties: IVES et al. v. BEECHER et ux.
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

54 A. 207

75 Conn. 564

IVES et al.

v. BEECHER et ux.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

March 4, 1903.

Case reserved from superior court, New Haven county; Alberto T. Roraback, Judge.

Action by Marie E. Ives, as administratrix, and others, against George H. Beecher and wife. Facts found and case reserved by the superior court for the consideration of the Supreme Court of Errdrs. Decree for plaintiffs advised.

Henry G. Newton and Harrison Hewitt, for plaintiffs.

Charles S. Hamilton, for defendants.

PRENTICE, J. The plaintiffs seek the foreclosure of a judgment lien. The judgment was one against both the defendants herein. The lien was filed upon six separate pieces of property. It is conceded that the defendant Mrs. Beecher owns the three pieces last described in the lien. The defendants deny that she has such an interest in either of the other three pieces as can be taken under a judgment lien. Confessedly, she is not the absolute owner of either. Mr. Beecher has no interest in any of the property, save such as he may have derived as the husband of Mrs. Beecher.

This situation raises preliminary questions as to the validity of the lien in any event. The lien is expressed "to be placed upon the following described real estate" of the defendants. The defendants contend (1) that the Hen is invalid, as against the first three pieces, because it does not accurately describe the interest of Mrs. Beecher therein; and (2) that the lien, being invalid as to some of the pieces described, is therefore invalid as to all. We are pointed to no authority in support of these claims, except such as is attempted to be drawn from an assumed analogy to mechanics' liens, and we know of none.

Upon the rendition of a judgment, the judgment creditor acquires, as against all the debtor's real estate and alienable beneficial interests therein not exempt from execution, the right to appropriate, if need be, any or all of the same to the satisfaction of the judgment by such process as the law provides for that purpose. This right of appropriation extends to each parcel of property, to the precise extent of the debtor's interest therein. Prior to 1878 our statutes recognized only one method of enforcing this right. That was by means of a levy of execution. By this process the right, which had before been a general one, became specific as to the property levied upon. The first step of the levy created a specific lien, by means of which the particular property or interest therein was by the completion of the levy sequestered to satisfy the judgment. In the creation of this specific lien, it still remained, if the levy was sufficiently comprehensive that it attached, as did the original right, to the precise interest of the debtor in the property, and not to his apparent or supposed interest therein; and the purchaser at the execution sale acquired the debtor's title or interest, whatever it was in fact Hitchcock v. Hotchkiss, 1 Conn. 470.

In 1878 the Legislature sought to provide another—more simple and beneficial—process for the enforcement of the general right created by a judgment Hence the legislation which now appears in Gen. St. 1902, § 4149 et seq. We have heretofore said that this legislation was designed to further the interests of both creditor and debtor, and therefore to be favorably construed to carry out its manifest purpose. Beardsley v. Beecher, 47 Conn. 408; Hobbs v. Simmonds, 61 Conn. 235, 23 Atl. 962. It is clear, from the purpose and provision of this act of 1878, that it was intended not only to furnish a new process, but, so far as interests in real estate were concerned, one which was to be coextensive in its application with the existing process. Its object, like that of the process by levy, was to create a specific lien upon specific property, through which any unexempt, alienable, beneficial interest therein which the debtor might have might be appropriated to satisfy the judgment. It could not reach interests which the debtor did not have. To be efficient, it must so operate as to reach all that he had, whether apparent or not. The Legislature was evidently looking for a process which should be at once as effective as the old, and at the same time simple, inexpensive, usable by persons not astute in the law, and not likely to be defeated in its ends through technicalities or exacting requirements. Therefore the absence of any requirement, or suggestion of requirement, that the judgment creditor should, at his peril, be able to know, and in fact describe, the precise interest of the debtor, in his attempt to convert his general right into a specific, enforceable lien by the new process. No such pitfall was prepared. The provisions and requirements of the law enacted were the simplest possible. It was framed upon the simple idea of effectuating the general right, as against certain specified property, by means of a recorded certificate, by force of which a specific lien should be created, which should attach to that to which the original right attached, to wit, to the debtor's precise interest, whatever it was, and which could be enforced by foreclosure, and the debtor's interest thus taken. The form of the certificate was prescribed. This form was apparently intended for all situations. It was apparently intended—and the reasons for the intentions are easy to discover—that by virtue of it any interest in lands subject to levy of execution might be reached, and reached without a precise description or general specification of that interest. This intention controls us, as it should, in concluding, as we do, that the plaintiffs' lien was, in form, sufficient to enable them, by its foreclosure, to take whatever interests, subject to levy of execution, the defendants may have had in the several pieces described.

The second...