Loeber v. Eckes

Miller, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is a case of exceptions to a sale under a power contained in a mortgage. The mortgage was executed by the appellee to the Permanent Land Company of the City of Baltimore, to secure the sum of $3000. The property mortgaged was twenty acres of land in Baltimore County, on the Trappe Road, about three miles from the city limits, and the improvements consisted mainly of a tavern and out-buildings.

The amount due on the mortgage was the principal and a small arrear of interest. The sale was made by the attorney named in the mortgage, at the court-house door in Towsontown. It appears to have been duly advertised in a county newspaper, and it does not appear that any other notice of the sale was given. The property was sold to the appellants for $4550, and exceptions to its ratification were filed by the mortgagor.

These exceptions were sustained, the sale set aside, and from the order vacating the sale the purchasers have appealed. The exceptions mainly relied on, and the only ones we shall notice, are inadequacy of price, that bidders were kept away by the mortagee’s agent for the purpose of preventing a fair sale, whereby the property sold for one-half its value, and that the sale was injured by fraudulent means adopted by the mortagee and its agents) other than the attorney who made the sale. It is well settled that mere inadequacy of price by itself is not sufficient to set aside a sale made by a trustee under a decree in equity, unless it he so gross and inordinate as to indicate want of reasonable judgment and discretion, or misconduct or fraud, in the trustee, or some mistake or unfairness for which the purchaser is responsible. ■ This is the doctrine of all the Maryland authorities, hut at the same time they all declare that where it appears there is ³ any other just cause to doubt the propriety of the sale, it is a consideration very proper to be viewed in connection with it, that the sale has been made at a reduced price. That was the doctrine announced in Glenn vs. Clapp, 11 G. & J., 9 ; and in Johnson vs. Dorsey, 7 Gill, 294 , the leading, case on this subject, the Court say: “ It is certainly true that inadequacy of price is to be regarded as a strong auxiliary argument in combination with circumstances calculated to cast doubt or suspicion upon the correctness of the sale.” Here the sale was not under a regular decree in equity, but under a power in a mortgage, and was made at the instance and for the benefit of the mortgagee.

In such a case what has been thus said in these decisions is peculiarly applicable, and we are clearly of opinion that if it appears there has been anything like fraud or unfairness on the part of the mortgagee or his agents in reference to the sale and calculated to affect it injuriously, that fact, in connection with great inadequacy of price, is good ground for setting it aside. How it is shown in this case by a great preponderance of proof that the property was worth largely over $6000. Witnesses living in the immediate