Slevin v. Brown

• Citation: 32 Mo. 176
• Parties: BERNARD SLEVIN, Trustee, &c., Plaintiff in Error, v. JOHN BROWN, Defendant in Error.
• Decision Date: 31 March 1862
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Missouri

32 Mo. 176

BERNARD SLEVIN, Trustee, &c., Plaintiff in Error,

v.JOHN BROWN, Defendant in Error.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

March Term, 1862.

Appeal from St. Louis Land Court.

This is an action, in the nature of an action of ejectment, to recover the possession of a lot of land in block 145, in the city of St. Louis, commenced in the St. Louis Land Court, on the 22d day of September, 1858.

The defendant in his answer denies the allegations in the petition, which, of course, puts the plaintiff on proof of his right to recover. The cause was tried by the court below without a jury.

The defendant admitted that he was in the possession of the premises in controversy at the time of the commencement of this suit, and that he was then, and had been, in the possession thereof ever since the 6th of September, 1858.

Both parties claim under a lease from John Biddle to Anthony Tiernan, dated October 1, 1852, for the term of nine years and nine months, renewable for the term of ten years longer after the expiration thereof.

On the 22d of January, 1853, Anthony Tiernan, for value received, assigned the lease to Bernard Slevin, the plaintiff in this suit, in trust for his (Tiernan's) wife, Catharine Tiernan, for her use and benefit during the term. (See opinion.)

Both the lease and the assignment were properly acknowledged and recorded November 26, 1853.

During the fall of 1854, Anthony Tiernan became indebted to one Thomas Burke for the sum of eighty-five dollars and sixty-one cents, for which Burke obtained judgment against Tiernan, on the 29th of August, 1855, before a justice of the peace of St. Louis county. The justice issued an execution on the judgment, which was returned nulla bona by the constable, on the 22d of October, 1855. A transcript of the judgment of the justice was, on the 30th of November, 1855, filed with the clerk of the St. Louis Land Court, who issued an execution thereon to the sheriff of St. Louis county, dated November 30, 1855. The sheriff, on the 4th day of February, 1856, sold the premises in controversy, as the property of Anthony Tiernan, under the execution issued to him by the clerk of the Land Court, and the defendant, John Brown, bought the land at the sale, and received a deed from the sheriff therefor. The title, therefore, of the defendant is under the sheriff's sale of the lease in 1856, for a debt of Tiernan's, which originated in the fall of 1854; and the title of the plaintiff is acquired by an assignment of the same lease, dated in the beginning of the year 1853, and recorded in the same year.

On trial, the plaintiff gave evidence tending to show that Slevin held possession of the premises as the trustee of Mrs. Tiernan, by virtue of the assignment of the lease in 1853, until September, 1858, when he was turned out of possession by the sheriff, under a writ of possession in favor of John Brown, against the tenants of Slevin; but Slevin was no party to the suit. The plaintiff read the lease and assignment in evidence.

Testimony was also introduced by the defendant by which he attempted to show that Tiernan was insolvent from 1852 to 1856, at the time of the assignment of the lease, and at the time of the sheriff's sale. The defendant also attempted to show that the plaintiff knew of the suit against his tenants; but nothing was offered to show that the plaintiff was a party to the suit.

The defendant then read in evidence the record and proceedings of the St. Louis Land Court, in the suit before mentioned, which was brought by John Brown against Anthony Tiernan, James Score, and Mary Cotton, the tenants of Slevin, the plaintiff in this suit; and the plaintiff at the time objected to the reading of the record and proceedings, on the ground of the evidence being incompetent and irrelevant.

For instructions see opinion.

Casselberry, for plaintiff in error.

I. The first point presented in this case is as to the effect and admissibility of the record in the suit in the St. Louis Land Court brought by John Brown against Anthony Tiernan, James Score, and Mary Cotton, the tenants of Bernard Slevin.

As Mr. Slevin was no party to the suit against his tenants, he is not bound thereby; nor is the record evidence in this case for any purpose whatever; and for this reason the court below erred in admitting the record in evidence, and in giving the instruction that the judgment in that case is bar to the action of the plaintiff in this case.

It is certainly a plain elementary rule of law that no one is bound by a legal proceeding to which he is no party.

A judgment against a person who had no notice of the pendency of the suit in which it was rendered, or who is no party to it, is absolutely void. (Bascom v. Young, 7 Mo. 1; Smith v. Ross, 7 Mo. 463; Anderson v. Brown, 9 Mo. 646.)

II. But, even if Slevin had been a party to the suit, it was a mere action of ejectment and would not bar another action of ejectment; that is to say, one action of ejectment is no bar to another action of ejectment between even the same parties. (Adams on Eject., 4 ed., top page 420.) At one time this principle was doubted, but we have now at least the following tacit recognition of the rule by the Legislature, that is to say, the Revised Statutes of 1855, (vol. 1, p. 695, § 33, tit. Ejectment,) provide that a judgment in ejectment shall be a bar to any other action of ejectment between the same parties as to the same subject matter; and the act of November 21, 1857, (p. 34, adjourned session,) repealed the 33d section of the act of 1855. By these two acts of the legislature we have the views of the legislative department on the subject, as well as judicial authority. The action, therefore, of the court below in admitting the record, and in giving the instruction that the plaintiff is barred thereby, is a plain, glaring, blunt error; and for this reason alone, if there were no other, this cause ought to be reversed and remanded.

III. The proceedings of John Brown against Slevin's tenants being void as to Slevin, as he was no party thereto, did not, in any manner, give Brown any more or greater right or title to the premises than he had before the commencement of the proceedings; and if he had no title at all, he was a mere trespasser. When the sheriff delivered possession, the plaintiff acted on his own peril. (Adams on Eject., 4 ed., pp. 342, 389, 391.) As Slevin was in the peaceable, quiet possession of the premises, he was, even without showing any title papers, entitled to recover against Brown, who had no title, and who was a mere trespasser or intruder. (Crocket v. Morrison, 11 Mo. 1.)

IV. The second instruction says that “whatever might have been the effect of the assignment made by Anthony Tiernan to Bernard Slevin of the lease in question, while Catharine Tiernan was alive, she being dead, the said Slevin has now no such interest as will enable him to recover the possession of said premises in this action.”

a. One reason advanced by the counsel for the defence was that the assignment fell within the provisions of the statute of uses, and was executed by the statute, so that Slevin had no title in him; that is to say, when Tiernan assigned the lease to Slevin, for the use of his (Tiernan's) wife, the statute of uses transferred the legal title to Mrs. Tiernan, which vested in her all of the title, both legal and equitable, leaving no title whatever of any kind in Slevin to enable him to recover in this action. But in answer to all this, we assert, fearless of successful refutation, that the statute of uses does not apply to leases or leasehold interest of any kind. (2 Black., s. p. 336; 4 Kent, 302, 6 ed.; Sanders on Uses, vol. 1, s. p. 86, 87 & 89; Adams on Eject., t. p. 132, s. p. 88, 4 ed.)

As the interest of Mr. Slevin is a leasehold interest, the statute of uses has no application to this case, which will be fully seen and understood by reading the authorities above quoted. The statute of uses of 1845 of Missouri, which was in force in 1853, at the time of the assignment of the lease, is similar in all its provisions to the English statute of uses of 27 Henry VIII., chap. 10, on which the foregoing authorities are based. The statute of uses was discussed at considerable length in 19 Mo. 147, which may have some bearing in favor of the plaintiff. (See, also, 4 Kent, 496, and Sanders on Uses, vol. 2, p. 58.)

b. It was also contended by the defendant in the court below that Tiernan had an interest in the equitable estate of Mrs. Tiernan, because the assignment did not in effect state that the property was to be enjoyed by her separate and apart from her husband. Where third persons convey an estate of inheritance to a trustee for the use of a married woman, her husband has a life estate in the land, called a curtesy, unless the deed contains expressions indicating that it is to be enjoyed by her separate and apart from her husband, or free from his control or intereference; but this principle does not apply where the husband himself conveys an estate of inheritance to a trustee for the benefit of his wife. (26 Conn. 226.)

The principle in this case, last cited, is that the husband is estopped by his own deed. If he conveys to another all of his right, title and interest for the benefit of his wife, the law will not allow him to deny or contradict his own deed, by claiming an interest in the same land which he conveyed by the deed itself.

c. The husband, however, has no life estate, or curtesy, in any of the real estate of his wife, except where she owns an estate of inheritance in the land--that is, an estate in fee simple. (2 Black., s. p. 126; 4 Kent, 26.) As the interest, therefore, held by Slavin in trust for Mrs. Tiernan is a mere leasehold interest, the husband had no curtesy, or any other interest whatever, in the property.

V. It may be that the court below intended to convey the idea that a trustee could not sue, but the most undoubted authorities go to establish the doctrine that a trustee can sue...