Doub v. Mason

Le Grand, ¡C. J., delivered the opinion of this court. This case was commenced by a bill filed in the high court of chancery, by the appellant Dou^3 praying an injunction, which was granted, to restrain the appellees from enforcing against certain lands of the appellant various executions isr sued ,out of 'Washington county .court, on judgments in said court, and levied on said lands. The case has been several times before the Court of Appeals, and the principles which must govern the more important questions involved in it have been ascertained by the opinions heretofore pronounced. The complainant invokes the interposition of a court of equity, on the ground that after the rendition of the judgments against Abraham Barnes, M. Mason and John T. Mason, they executed a conveyance of all their real estate in Washington county, and also of a large personal estate, in trust, to pay their debts according to their just priority; that the judgment creditors, of whom the appellees are assignees, had knowledge of this deed and acquiesced in the control of the trustees over ⁴⁰⁵ the property conveyed, and by acts indicative of their intention to look for payment of their claims to the proceeds of sales which should be made by the trustees, they gave credit to the trustees, and enabled them to make better sales for the creditors than otherwise would have been effected.

That the complainant was persuaded to purchase from the trustees from a belief well founded in the conduct of the creditors, that they would look to the trustees for payment of their claims out of the proceeds of sales, and not to the land. When the case was before the late Court of Appeals, at June term 1846, on an appeal from the decision of the chancellor dissolving the injunction which had been previously granted, the court said: “If the judgment creditors assented to the deed of trust, and by their conduct induced the complainant and others to become the purchasers of the lands bound by their judgments, and to believe that they would look to the trustees for the payment of their .claims, and not to the liens created by their judgments, we cannot hut believe that such conduct would furnish a valid equitable defence. To allow the judgment creditors, after such a course of conduct, to enforce their judgments against the purchasers, would be to permit them to perpetrate a fraud upon the purchasers. The obvious consequence of such a procedure on the part of the judgment .creditors would be to lull the purchasers into a false security, and to induce them to believe that a title would follow the payment of the purchase money.

Upon the state of facts alleged, it would not be necessary for the purchasers to see to the application of the purchase money, credit being given to the trustees, and they being known to be alone looked to for the payment of the judgments by the proceeds of sales.” To enable the complainant, if within his power, to make out these facts, or a sufficient number of them to entitle him to make out his claim to the relief asked, the case was sent back to the court of chancery. We understand the Court of Appeals in 4 Gill, 19 , as affirming the proposition that it is incumbent on the part of ⁴⁰⁶ the complainant to establish affirmatively, that the judgment creditors, by their conduct, either in fact abandoned their liens, or by it induced the complainant to believe they designed to look exclusively to the trustees for payment; and that, unless it so appear, the complainant can have no right to invoke the intervention of the court of chancery to restrain the judgment creditors from enforcing their