State Sash & Door Manuf'G Co. v. Adams

• Decision Date: 25 November 1891
• Parties: STATE SASH & DOOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY <I>vs.</I> ELIZABETH W. ADAMS and another.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

47 Minn. 399

STATE SASH & DOOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY vs. ELIZABETH W. ADAMS and another.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

November 25, 1891.

Two actions to enforce mechanics' liens, brought in the district court for Hennepin county, and tried by Lochren, J., pursuant to whose findings judgments were entered in each case, establishing a lien in plaintiff's favor for $282.32, the value of the materials furnished, and costs taxed at $33.33, making $315.65, and directing a sale, etc. Defendants appeal from the judgments, and also from orders made after their appeals from the judgments were taken, directing amendments of the findings as stated in the opinion.

Fred. W. Reed, for appellants.

F. C. Brooks and Molyneaux & Peterson, for respondent.

MITCHELL, J.

Exceedingly loose and careless practice on part of plaintiff's attorneys in the court below has furnished defendants' counsel an opportunity to raise numerous points, all of which are purely technical, not going to the real merits of the cases, and none of them, as we think, well taken. The proceedings in each action are, in substance, the same, except as respects a difference in one of the parties defendant, and in the description of the property affected. Hence both cases may be considered together. They were actions to enforce mechanics' liens for material furnished by the plaintiff to defendant Kieran, as contractor with defendant Adams as owner, for the construction of houses on the land of Adams. In the one case defendant Ellis, and in the other defendant Nash, had a mortgage on the premises, alleged to be subsequent to the liens of the plaintiff. All the defendants appeared in the actions before judgment except Kieran, Ellis, and Nash, upon whom the summons was served by publication on the ground of non-residence. About two months after judgments were rendered in the actions, Ellis and Nash, respectively, appealed from the judgments; Adams, the owner of the premises, joining in the appeals. After these appeals were perfected, but before the returns were made to this court, upon motion of plaintiff's attorney, and on notice to all the parties who had appeared in the actions, and upon affidavit showing that the judge who tried the causes requested plaintiff's attorney to draw findings in accordance with the complaints, that in doing so the attorney had by mistake drawn them so as to state that plaintiff furnished the material to Adams, the owner, instead of to Kieran, the contractor, and omitted to state that Kieran was erecting the buildings under a contract with Adams, — the court (the same judge who tried...