Whitney v. Huntington

• Decision Date: 08 July 1887
• Citation: 37 Minn. 197
• Parties: EDWIN C. WHITNEY <I>vs.</I> WILLIAM W. HUNTINGTON.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

37 Minn. 197

EDWIN C. WHITNEYvs.

WILLIAM W. HUNTINGTON.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

July 8, 1887.

Plaintiff brought this action in the district court for Hennepin county, to recover for the alleged conversion by defendant of logs and timber wrongfully cut and removed from land alleged to belong to the plaintiff. The answer denied plaintiff's ownership of the land or of the logs and timber. At the trial, before Lochren, J., and a jury, special findings were taken upon issues as to the amount of the logs and timber cut and the value thereof, both at the time they were cut upon the land and at the time they were converted; and, by agreement, the other issues were tried by the court. Upon the special findings of the jury and the facts found by the court, judgment was directed for plaintiff for the value of the logs and timber upon the land at the time they were cut as found by the jury. Both plaintiff and defendant appeal from an order refusing a new trial. A former appeal is reported in 34 Minn. 458.

Atwater & Hill and P. M. Babcock, for plaintiff.

Shaw, Best & Cray, for defendant.

DICKINSON, J.¹

This is an action to recover the value of a large quantity of logs, which were cut by Griffin and Beard upon vacant and unimproved lands in Morrison county, to which land this plaintiff asserts title. The defendant's appeal presents the question whether the plaintiff, Whitney, or Griffin, (from whom the defendant, by purchase, claims title to the logs,) owned the land.

The facts respecting the title may, for the purposes of this decision, be thus briefly stated: Clark, the owner of the land, executed a deed of conveyance, absolute in form, to Baldwin, in 1869, which was recorded in March, 1877. This was in fact given to secure an indebtedness of Clark to a bank of which Baldwin was the cashier. In February, 1877, judgments for the recovery of money against Clark, and in favor of Hayward and Phaneuf, respectively, were docketed in Morrison county. In April, 1875, Clark executed a mortgage upon these lands to Pinney, which was recorded in November, 1877. In February, 1878, Armstrong recovered a judgment for money against Baldwin, which was assigned to this plaintiff, and in February, 1882, the judgment was docketed in Morrison county. This plaintiff then had no knowledge as to the title of this land, except such as the record disclosed. Under execution issued upon that judgment, the land in question was sold in April, 1883, this plaintiff being the purchaser, for the sum of $3,099.75, and the sheriff's certificate of sale was then recorded. In July, 1882, an action was commenced by the administrator of Pinney's estate to foreclose the mortgage given by Clark to Pinney. Clark, Baldwin, Hayward, Phaneuf, and the bank were made parties defendant, but the judgment creditors of Baldwin were not parties to the action. In that action judgment was rendered in March, 1883, adjudging the title to be in Clark, and that the land should be sold to satisfy the incumbrances in the following order: (1) The Hayward judgment; (2) the Phaneuf judgment; (3) the debt which the deed was given to Baldwin to secure; and, lastly, the Pinney mortgage. This judgment of foreclosure was executed by a sale of the property to Griffin, in July, 1883, and in December following Clark quitclaimed to him.

It is not denied that, as between the Pinney mortgage from Clark, through the foreclosure of which the defendant asserts the title to have been acquired by Griffin, and the Armstrong judgment against Baldwin, through which the plaintiff claims title, the latter was the superior lien under the operation of the registry law; but it is claimed by the defendant that Griffin, the purchaser at the foreclosure sale, acquired through these foreclosure proceedings a title under the Hayward and Phaneuf judgments superior to that acquired by the plaintiff under the later Armstrong judgment.

This claim cannot be sustained. The purchaser at the foreclosure sale acquired no title under those judgments as against this plaintiff who was not a party to the action. The plaintiff's junior judgment lien would, of course, have been extinguished if the land had been sold under executions issued upon those senior judgments. The notice of sale under the decree was perhaps published for the same time as it would have been for an execution sale, and the sale conducted in the same way; but there is a distinction in respect to the authority for making the sale; in the one case, an execution, in the other, a judgment in an action to foreclose a mortgage lien subordinate to the lien of this plaintiff. An execution might be issued, as authorized by law, to enforce the prior judgments, without this plaintiff having been ever in any manner brought into court, and his rights would be affected by such a sale. But while the judgment in the foreclosure action directed a sale of so much of the premises as might be necessary to satisfy the prior specified...