Goldman v. Miles

¹⁸¹ Stockbridge, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This case was instituted for the purpose of determining the marketability, in so far as the title was concerned, of certain property on East Lombard Street and South Collingtou Avenue in Baltimore City. Exceptions to the ratification of a sale were filed by the appellants, who had been reported as purehasers of the property in question, upon the ground that the title was not a good and marketable one. The antecedent conveyances of the property had created some confusion in the lines, but the real objection, and the only one directly involved now, arose from the existence of three unreleased mortgages in which the property or some part of it had been included.

The first of these was executed on the 13th March, 1873, to secure an indebtedness of $1,950; the second bears date the 20th March, 3 873, in which the property in question and certain other property was mortgaged to secure au indebtedness of $7,500; and the third mortgage was one hearing date March 24th, 1873, for the sum of $1,500. There is no direct evidence that the mortgage for $7,500 tvas paid in full, but it does appear from the administration accounts in the estate of the mortgage© that very considerable payments were made upon it. The mortgagee named in the first and third of the mortgages above mentioned was the Old Town Permanent Building Association, that corporation was placed in the hands of receivers in the early part of 1883, hut nowhere in the receivership proceedings is there any question of, or reference to the mortgage for $3,950. Shortly after the receivers had been appointed they obtained a decree of foreclosure against the mortgagor of the property described in the $1,500 mortgage, and as appears from the daily papers of the time, and from the report of sale made in the foreclosure proceedings, the property was sold to the testator of the appellee, which sale was reported to the Court and finally ratified, but no deed was apparently ever exe ¹⁸² exited for the property, and no further proceedings were had in the mortgage foreclosure case. , As to the effect of the failure to record the trustee’s deed, if it was- executed or subsequently lost, and as to the effect of the non-recording and subsequent loss of the papers in the foreclosure case, the matter has been fully covered by the decision of this Court in Rieman v. Wagner, Trustee, 74 Md. 478 , and can not of itself constitute a ground for refusing to accept the title.

With regard to the condition presented by the unreleased mortgages for $1,950 and $1,500, this case must not be confused with that class of cases in which a borrower has filed a bill to quiet his title as against a mortgage which concededly has not been paid, though a period of time has elapsed sufficient to bar the claim under a