Woodruff v. Stough

• Decision Date: 26 July 1895
• Citation: Woodruff v. Stough, 18 So. 258, 107 Ala. 314 (Ala. 1895)
• Parties: WOODRUFF ET AL. v. STOUGH.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

18 So. 258

107 Ala. 314

WOODRUFF ET AL. v. STOUGH.

Supreme Court of Alabama

July 26, 1895

Appeal from chancery court, Crenshaw county; Jere N. Williams Chancellor.

Bill by William A. Stough against W. H. Woodruff and another to prevent the enforcement of a judgment entered on a bond. A demurrer to the bill was overruled, and defendants appeal. Affirmed.

Gamble Powell & Bricken, for appellants.

J. D Gardner, for appellee.

McCLELLAN J.

The appellee, Stough, who is complainant in this cause, and R. J Cook, jointly owned a certain mill and ginnery outfit, consisting of a steam engine and boiler, a sawmill, a gristmil, two gins, and one cotton press and fixtures, three yokes of oxen, and one dray. They sold the entire outfit to Woodruff and others, who are respondents to the bill, and appellants in this court. The agreed consideration was $1,800, payable at a future time. To secure payment of the purchase money, the purchasers, at the instance of the sellers, executed separate notes to Stough and Cook, each for one-half the agreed price, or $900, and also a separate mortgage to each of them to secure the payment of $900, severally. These mortgages each covered a one-half undivided interest in the property sold, and also certain land, upon which the personalty was at the time of the sale, but whether the whole, or, in terms, undivided half interests in the land, was embraced in the mortgages, respectively, we are not advised, nor is it material. Cook subsequently transferred the note and mortgage he held to Tranum. After the law day of the mortgages, Stough and Tranum each brought an action of detinue for the personalty, against Woodruff et al. The defendants failing to give bonds for the retention of the property within the statutory period, the plaintiff in each of the actions gave the necessary bond for the forthcoming of the property, and took possession of it,-we suppose, jointly, but that it also immaterial. After this, and before the trial of the detinue actions was had, Stough and Tranum sold the personalty, under and in accordance with the powers of sale contained in their mortgages; and they severally became purchasers at that sale of the interest embraced in their respective mortgages, at the price of $200. By like authority, they also sold the land covered by the mortgages, and themselves-jointly, we suppose-purchased it for $700. The detinue suits coming on after this for trial, the defendants in each of them made the suggestion provided for in section 2720 of the Code, whereby it became the duty of the jury to ascertain the amounts of the mortgage debts, and this inquiry was accordingly gone into. In the course of it, in each case, as the bill alleges, the defendants "each insisted and demanded that the amount due on the mortgage debt should be credited with the amount which the property brought" at the sale under the power, which, as we have seen, occurred pending these actions, and they also insisted that the mortgages should be further credited with the amount for which the land had been sold and purchased by Stough and Tranum, and accordingly these sums were credited against the mortgage debts; and in this way the jury, while returning a verdict upon which there was judgment for the plaintiff, ascertained a balance due on each mortgage of $52.20. These ascertainments were entered upon the record, and the court, we assume, as required by the statute, thereupon ordered, in each case, that if the debt so ascertained, interest, and costs, should be paid within 30 days, no execution or other process should issue on the judgment for the property. Such payment was made to the clerk for the use of the plaintiff, and the money was paid by the clerk to the plaintiff, in each case, and the necessary indorsement of the fact of such payment was made by the clerk on the face of the judgment. The jury also assessed the value of the property taken by plaintiff in each case at $1,370. The property so taken and held by the plaintiffs, severally, under the forthcoming bonds given by them, was not delivered up by them within 30 days, as required by section 2721 of the Code; and they each being, on the facts we have stated, the unsuccessful party, under the last clause of section 2720, and within the terms of section 2721, the sheriff made return of the fact of such failure to deliver up the property, as required by the latter section; and, the bond in each of the cases having upon this return the force and effect of a judgment, the clerk, under the authority conferred upon him by said section, issued executions against the obligors on the bond in each case for the value of the property as assessed by the jury.

The foregoing are the facts averred in the present bill exhibited by said Stough, in which it is also averred that the complainant, "being ignorant of the legal effect of the judgment rendered in said circuit court, and ignorant of the legal consequences thereof, accepted the said sum ($52.20) so found by the jury to be the balance due upon said mortgage debt, and that on the 9th day of May, 1893 (the judgment in the detinue suit having been rendered on March 17, 1893, and execution on the forfeited bond having issued on May 1, 1893) he tendered to said respondents the said $52.20, with interest thereon, which they refused to receive." The prayer of the bill is that "the respondents be held to have ratified the purchase of said property by orator at said mortgage sale, by claiming credit for the amount bid therefor by your orator at said mortgage sale; or, if this is not an appropriate relief, orator then prays that said respondents be required to credit the amount of the claim by respondents against orator with the said sum for which they have already received credit." The prayer, further, is that it be decreed that the "respondents are not entitled to a judgment against orator and said Tranum for the full amount of the value of the property as ascertained by the jury, *** but to only one-half thereof." And, if mistaken in these prayers, the complainant asks for such other and further and general relief as the premises may warrant, etc. A demurrer, assigning numerous grounds, was laid against the bill, and sustained by the court, but with leave to complainant to amend, whereupon the following amendment was filed and allowed: "Orator avers that the verdict so rendered by the jury, in so far as they ascertained the amount due on the mortgage debt, and the judgment of the court entered in accordance therewith, was a mistake on the part of said jury and the court which rendered said judgment, which mistake was made without fault or negligence on the part of the complainant, as he did not know that respondents would afterwards claim the property which had been sold, and which sale they ratified by accepting the proceeds thereof, and claiming the same as a credit on their indebtedness to the complainant. And complainant avers that he had no notice that said respondents would set up said claim." To the bill as thus amended the original demurrer was refiled, and an additional ground of demurrer, that the complainant had a plain and adequate remedy at law, was interposed. All the assignments of demurrer were then overruled, and from the decree in that behalf the respondents prosecute this appeal.

This is an anomalous case, upon the facts, and one which exhibits much of hardship to the complainant. It belongs to that class of hard cases which sometimes makes "shipwreck of the law." It must have been the bias which is characteristic of just minds against natural injustice that led to the decree below. That injustice was done the complainant by the verdict and judgment in the circuit court, is clear. But courts of equity do not undertake to remedy all wrongs, nor to see to it that abstract justice is done in all cases. They grant relief only when the facts bring a case within some ground of equity jurisdiction. When the wrong complained of results from a judgment at law, such judgment itself must have resulted from fraud, accident, or mistake. Mistake is the equitable ground attempted to be put forward here, and no question of fraud or accident arises. What mistakes will authorize the interposition of chancery? In the first place it must be a mistake of fact, not of law. All courts indulge the presumption that all men know the law, and will entertain no plea of ignorance of the law. The mistake of fact must have been made without fault or neglect of the party relying upon it. And it must be the mistake of the party who does rely upon it,-not of his opponent, not of the jury which returns the verdict, not of the judge who presides at the trial, and not of the court which renders the judgment. The mistake of the jury is remediable through proper and timely invocation of the powers of the presiding judge, and his action upon such invocation is revisable by this court. So, also, of mistakes of the presiding judge and of the court; they are remediable here. Such mistakes are mere errors of law, for which resulting judgments will be set aside in the court rendering them, or by this court on appeal. The chancery court is without power to correct them. The judgment of a court of law, though it be honeycombed with errors of fact committed by the jury, and errors of law committed by the judge, is as valid and as unassailable in equity as if entirely free from infirmity upon appellate test. In this case the only mistakes brought to view are those of the circuit court, in allowing the jury to credit the mortgage debt with the amount bid by the mortgagee at the sale under the power of the mortgaged property, and of the jury, in deducting this sum from the mortgage debt in their ascertainment of the balance then due. For the correction of...