McKinley v. Tice
| Decision Date | 23 April 1929 |
| Citation | 129 Or. 190,276 P. 1110 |
| Parties | MCKINLEY ET AL. v. TICE ET AL. |
| Court | Oregon Supreme Court |
Department 1.
Appeal from Circuit Court, Multnomah County; Arlie G. Walker, Judge.
Suit by C. R. McKinley and others against Earnest Tice and others. From a decree dismissing the suit, plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.
W. T. Vinton and Eugene E. Marsh, both of McMinnville (Vinton & Tooze, of McMinnville, on the brief) for appellants.
Warren E. Thomas, of Portland (B. A. Kliks, of McMinnville, and Chamberlain, Thomas, Kraemer & Powell and Seitz & Christensen, all of Portland, on the brief), for respondents.
Plaintiffs contracted with the Tice Lumber Company, a copartnership, to cut into sawlogs all of the timber on a certain tract of land and to deliver the logs at the sawmill of the copartnership. They delivered, pursuant to the contract, 1,098,000 feet of logs for which there is now due them a balance of $1,451.76. The copartnership sawed the logs into lumber and sold the lumber, a part being purchased by the Nebraska Bridge Supply & Lumber Company and the remainder by the Coast Fir & Cedar Products Company, neither of which companies had any notice of plaintiffs' claim. The lumber was sold at a price of $14 per thousand feet, of which $10 per thousand feet was paid, the remainder to be paid upon delivery of the lumber on board cars. After the lumber had been so sold, plaintiffs pursuant to section 10236, Or. L., filed a lien upon the lumber, and shortly thereafter commenced suit to foreclose the lien. Upon the trial of the cause in the court below, the suit was dismissed, and plaintiffs have appealed.
The statute under which the lien is claimed provides: Section 10236, Or. L.
Defendants contend that this statute is in derogation of the common law and for that reason must be strictly construed, while plaintiffs contend that it is a remedial statute and should be liberally construed. It is clear from a mere reading of the statute that it provides remedies which were unknown at common law. It was a general principle of the common law that a bailee of personal property who has imparted to it an additional value has a lien on the property for his reasonable charges, and he has the right to retain the property in his possession until the charges therefor have been paid. This lien or right was not an interest in the property itself but a right to retain only, and depended for its existence upon the actual possession of the property for, if possession was once voluntarily given up, then the lien was lost. It was also a principle of the common law that the lien of a workman for services performed upon a chattel belonged strictly to the person who contracted to do the work or perform the services and not to subcontractors or persons employed under him. Ross v. Spaniol, 122 Or. 424, 429, 251 P. 900, 259 P. 430. This common-law lien has not been abrogated by statute, and hence is still in force in cases where the facts warrant its application. The remedies provided by this statute are entirely different from those provided by the common law, and rest upon an entirely different state of facts. Under this statute the possession of the logs at the time the work is being performed, or the retention of the possession after the services have been performed, is not essential to the validity of the lien, and, in the case provided for by the statute, the workman is not in possession of the logs within the meaning of that word as used at common law at the time he performed the work. Under this statute the logs are in the possession of the owner, and the workman has nothing more than...
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Diamond National Corporation v. Lee
...is for the benefit of one who performs the labor and is not extended to one who hires the labor performed and pays for it. McKinley v. Tice, 129 Or. 190, 276 P. 1110, is of importance. There, as here, the plaintiffs claimed that they actually performed part of the work and that the remainde......
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Kidder v. Nekoma Lumber Co.
...therefore, fatal to the validity of the claimed lien. Phillips v. Graves, 139 Or. 336, 349, 9 P.2d 490, 83 A.L.R. 1; McKinley v. Tice, 129 Or. 190, 196, 276 P. 1110; Spratt v. Brown-Petzel Lumber Co., 105 Or. 672, 680, 210 P. At the very threshold of our inquiry we are confronted with a det......
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Phillips v. Graves
...filing the required notice. For a collection of decisions, see Phillips on Mechanics' Liens (3d Ed.) §§ 54-56 and 40 C.J. "Mechanics' Liens," p. 309, § 407. An examination of the discloses that many of those which hold that the assignment of the debt authorizes the assignee to perfect the l......
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Feris v. Balcom
...agent. * * *' The relevant facts in this case are substantially the same as those which existed in the case of McKinley et al. v. Tice et al., 129 Or. 190, 276 P. 1110 (1929). In that case plaintiffs contracted with defendants to cut all of the timber on a particular tract of land and to de......