Case ID: yeates_3/html/0267-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

AT A CIRCUIT COURT, AT WASHINGTON,
    NOVEMBER 1801.
    Lessee of Edward Samms against Henry Alexander.
    Coram, Yeates and Smith, Justices.
    Evidence of the debt, on which a sheriff’s sale of lands was founded, being paid previous to the sale, shall not be received to effect the title of a stranger who has purchased. Aliter if the plaintiff in the execution is the purchaser.
    Ejectment for 100 a acres in East Bethlehem township.
    The plaintiff claimed under a warrant of 8th March 1786, and a survey thereon made 30th September 1787.
    The defendant claimed under a judgment obtained against Samms, in March term 1787, a fieri facias to July term 1787, whereon the lands were levied, and a sale by James Marshall, esq. then sheriff, under a venditioni exponas to October term 1787. William Wallace, esq. the succeeding sheriff, by order of the Court of Common Pleas, executed the deed to the defendant, in consideration of 10L, February 8th, 1792.
    Criticised in I Rawle 227 as to the dicta o£ Yeates, J., based on Goodyerv. Jtmce, Yelv. 179. Cited in 18 Pa. 85, where the dicta of Yeates, J.. is apparently approved.
    The plaintiff proposed to prove, that the debt had been fully paid to Thomas Stokeley, the plaintiff in the execution, previous to the sheriff’s sale, but admitted that no notice hereof could be traced to the defendant.
    Mr. Pentecost, pro quer.
    
    Messrs. Ross and Campbell, pro dcf.
    
   The court said, it was impossible to receive such evidence, however hard the case might appear. If sheriffs’ sales could be avoided by such objections, it would produce the most fatal consequences. The defendant had paid his money, without being apprized of any dispute, confiding in the regularity of the court proceedings.' If indeed Stokeley, the plaintiff, had bought at the sheriff’s sale, this evidence might have been gone into, according to the authority of Goodyer v. Junce, Yelv. 179; but *it is clearly otherwise as to a stranger. The lessor of the plaintiff had ample time to move the Court of Common [*269 Pleas to set aside the sale, and it was his neglect and folly not to have done it. The evidence was overruled, and the jury gave a verdict for the defendant instanter.