Keystone Min. Co. v. Gallagher

• Decision Date: 01 April 1879
• Citation: 5 Colo. 23
• Parties: KEYSTONE MINING CO. ET AL. v. GALLAGHER ET AL.
• Court: Colorado Supreme Court

5 Colo. 23

KEYSTONE MINING CO. ET AL. v. GALLAGHER ET AL.

Supreme Court of Colorado

April, 1879

Error to County Court of Boulder County.

ON February 14th, 1877, Gallagher filed his petition in the County Court of Boulder county for a mechanic's lien. The petition stated substantially that on the first day of August, 1876, and thence until the 15th day of December of the same year, James W. Strong was the owner of the Keystone lode, situated in Magnolia mining district, in Boulder county; that Strong employed the petitioner to do certain work in developing said lode, and that the work was done by the petitioner between the first and fourteenth of September 1876; also that Strong employed the petitioner on the 14th of September, 1876, to work by the day on said lode, and that he performed labor upon said lode until the 14th day of December, 1876. That Strong was indebted to him for said work, etc.; and that on the 15th of December, 1876, Strong conveyed the property to the Keystone Mining Company; and that the said company was the owner of the property at the time of filing his petition, on the 22nd day of January 1877. That on said last mentioned date, notice and statement were filed in the office of the county clerk; that William Gillett and others claimed to have liens, and prayed that they be made defendants; and that he might be decreed to have a lien, etc., for the balance of the amount, $148.31, alleged to be due him. Summons was issued, returnable to the April term, 1877. Some of the defendants not being served publication was had. Appearance was entered and answers put in for the various defendants, except Strong, who was defaulted June 21, 1877, and the cause referred to a special master to take proofs. Upon the coming in of the master's report, on the 25th day of June, 1877, a decree was entered in favor of the several claimants, exceeding in the aggregate the sum of $2,000, and for a lien upon the premises in question. It was also ordered that the several sums, with interest from the date of the decree at ten per cent. per annum, be paid by July 25, 1877; and in default, that the master should make sale of the property on the 25th of August, 1877, upon not less than twenty days' notice. To reverse this decree, the Keystone Mining Company sued out a writ of error.

Mr. W. A. HARDENBROOK, for plaintiffs in error.

Messrs. BUTLER & WRIGHT and Messrs. BLAKE, WHITLEY and NORTH, for defendants in error.

STONE J.

The aggregate amount of the several sums found due the defendants in error as lien claimants, exceeded two thousand dollars and it is assigned for error, that, under the constitutional limitation of the jurisdiction of county courts to two thousand dollars as to the amount claimed, the court below was without jurisdiction to render the decree. We cannot regard the decree as open to this objection. The demands of the lien claimants are several in their nature, and in the mode of their enforcement. Each files his separate statement as the statute requires. Each presents his separate petition to enforce the lien, and therein sets out his particular cause of action. The individual claim of no one exceeds the sum of two thousand dollars. The court renders a decree several as to each claimant, and so long as no one claim exceeds two thousand dollars, it is not objection that the aggregate amount of all the claims is in excess of that sum. Each claim so presented is, in its nature, a several and distinct action, but in order to avoid a multiplicity of writs, sales and costs, and to prevent preferences among lien claimants arising from priority of decrees, sales and payments, the statute has provided a mode of enforcing these several rights, whereby all the claims may be heard and determined in nominally one proceeding, adjudicated at one time, and enforced under one decree; a mode which was evidently intended to be the most equitable and the least expensive. In the case of Powers et al. v. McCord, et al. 36 Ill. 221, the court, in discussing the provisions of the statute requiring the court to ascertain the amount due each creditor, and to direct the application of the proceeds of sales, say: 'These provisions are peremptory, and the court, on the trial, must ascertain the sum due to each claimant before a decree is rendered, directing the sale of the property, and the application of its proceeds to the claimants in proportion to the amount found due to each, if not sufficient to pay all of their claims. It may be, and perhaps is, the better practice to empanel a jury to pass upon and find the amount due each claimant, as though they were separate proceedings. But where there are but few parties, and the claims are not complicated, no objection is perceived to submitting the whole case to the same jury. But a final decree, ordering a...