Lass v. Sternberg

• Decision Date: 31 March 1872
• Parties: RICHARD LASS et al., Respondents, v. BERNARD N. STERNBERG et al., Appellants.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

50 Mo. 124

RICHARD LASS et al., Respondents,

v.BERNARD N. STERNBERG et al., Appellants.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

March Term, 1872.

Appeal from St. Louis Circuit Court.

Fisher & Rowell, for appellants.

Finkelnburg & Rassieur, for Eisleben.

F. & L. Gottschalk, for respondents.

ADAMS, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

The plaintiffs, as the sole heirs at law of Frederick Lass, deceased, who died in 1869, brought this suit to redeem a lot in the city of St. Louis, which belonged to their ancestor, and which, after his death and within nine months, was sold under a deed of trust existing upon the lot when the ancestor bought the same. The deed of trust under which it was sold was not executed by Lass, but by the prior owner. Lass, after he became the owner, executed to the defendant Sternberg, as trustee, a deed of trust to secure a debt of $350 to F. A. Meysenberg. At the sale under the first deed of trust, Sternberg became the purchaser, and soon after conveyed the property to his co-defendant, Eisleben, and this suit was brought to redeem the property by paying the amount Sternberg paid for the property and also the amount due to Meysenberg. Meysenberg, it seems, was not made a party to the suit.

The case was tried upon an agreed state of facts which are substantially as above detailed. The court rendered a decree in favor of the plaintiffs' vesting the title in them on the payment of the amount Sternberg paid for the property.

It is contended that the sale under the prior deed of trust was not valid because the ancestor of the plaintiffs had not been dead nine months before the sale. To warrant this conclusion, section 7 of article III, title Administration (Wagn. Stat. 94), is relied on. That section reads: “If any person, having given a deed of trust or mortgage with power of sale, die, no sale shall take place under such deed of trust or mortgage within nine months after the death of such person.” This section was first enacted in 1847, and was embraced in the revision of 1855 and continued in the General Statutes or revision of 1865. The language of this section is too plain to admit of doubt as to its proper construction. It refers alone to the deeds of trust executed by the person who dies, and not to such as may have been executed by other parties on the same property. There has been no adjudiciated case arising on this section that I am aware of; but the history of the country will show that the construction has been to apply it to...