Merchants' & Farmers' Bank v. Lillie Lumber Co.
Merchants' & Farmers' Bank v. Lillie Lumber Co.
Opinion of the Court
The defendant company and F. B. Farrar, the former owning a sawmill, and the latter the land upon which it stood, joined in an act of mortgage to the plaintiff bank upon the mill and the land. The present suit is in foreclosure of that mortgage. The defendant company and Farrar made no defense, and judgment went against them by default. Thompson, Ritchie & Co., creditors of the defendant company, intervened.
These are self-evident propositions. The contention that the interveners have an interest, as warrantors of the title acquired by the purchaser at the judicial sale theretofore made under their judgment, is in direct opposition to articles 711 and 713 of the Code of Practice, which provide that if the purchaser at a judicial sale is evicted, for the reason that the thing sold did not belong to the debtor in execution, he shall have recourse against both the seizing creditor and the seized debtor; but that if he is evicted on the hypothecary action of a creditor, who had a mortgage upon the property, he shall have recourse only against the seized debtor, and not against the seizing creditor.
The judgment appealed from is affirmed, in so far as it is against defendants, and it is set aside, in so far as it is in favor of the interveners; and the intervention is dismissed; the interveners to pay the costs of the lower court pertaining to the intervention, and also those of the appeal.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.