Van Riswick v. Goodhue

Stewart, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. It appears that Eugene S. Calvert, on the 18th of July, 1871, gave his promissory note, for twenty-five hundred dollars, to the Ereedmans’ Trust Company, payable one year after date, and on the same day executed an instrument of writing, intended to be a mortgage on certain of his real property, to Daniel L. Eaton, actuary of the said Trust Company, to secure the payment of the said note. The appellee advanced the sum of twenty-two hundred dollars to the said Calvert, on the said security, and the note and mortgage, after a credit-of three hundred dollars thereon, was assigned to the appellee. Some question was made as to the rights of the appellee under the mortgage, given to the company in the first-instance, and afterwards transferred to the appellee; but we see no force in the objections.

The transaction appears throughout to have been bona fide, and the appellee, either as principal or as assignee, ⁶¹ must be treated in equity as holding all the rights and equitable liens of the mortgagee, upon the property embraced thereby. The bill was filed to establish the validity of the mortgage, and to enforce the lien on the property, against the mortgagor and his creditors, whether prior or subsequent to its date and for a sale of the land, for that purpose. The appellant assuming the mortgage to be defective, claims to hold a judgment on the property, subsequent to the date of the mortgage, and also as a purchaser of the land, at the sheriff’s sale, subsequent to the filing of this bill, under the judgment of another creditor. The Code, Art. 21, sec. 10, requires every deed, conveying real estate, to be signed and sealed by the grantor, and attested by at least one witness.

Under sec. 30 of the same Article, the president or other officer of a corporation may make the affidavit to a mortgage, as to the bona fides