Case ID: va_94/html/0614-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Buchanan, «L,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Richmond
    Marchant & Another v. Healy & Others.
    June 17, 1897.
    1. Appeais — Amount in controversy — Dismissal.—The amount in controversy in this case is the difference between the amount claimed by the appellants and the amount recovered, and this sum being less than $500, the appeal will be dismissed, although appellees raised no objection to the jurisdiction of the court.
    Argued at Bichmond. Decided at Wytheville.
    Appeal from a decree of the Circuit Court of Middlesex county, pronounced November 28, 1894, in a suit in chancery wherein John JR. Marchant was the complainant, and the appellees, and the appellant W. W. Woodward, trustee, were the defendants.
    
      Appeal dismissed.
    
    John JR. Marchant had a second deed of trust on a tract of 383^ acres of land. The first deed was on a tract of land described as containing six hundred acres, more or less, and embraced the land conveyed in the second deed of trust. The first deed was given to secure money belonging to an infant, which was loaned under an order of the court. After both deeds had been given, the grantor applied to the court under whose order the money was loaned to release a part of the land conveyed by the first deed, as the lands conveyed by that deed were more than ample security for the amount borrowed. The court ordered a release of a part of the land conveyed by the first deed, but the release deed does not appear ever to have been executed. The grantor, however, sold and conveyed this land to sundry different purchasers who paid the purchase money therefor. The beneficiary in the second deed was no party to the suit, and knew nothing of the order for the release of a part of the land.
    The appellant Marchant instituted this suit, to which all of the alienees of any part of the land were made parties, in order to marshall the assets, and have a sale of the land conveyed by both deeds, and if this was not sufficient to pay both debts, then to sell so much of the land conveyed by the first deed only as was necessary to make up the deficiency. The tract conveyed by both deeds was sold, and the purchase price was sufficient to pay the whole of the first lien and all of the second except about $320. The court below refused to subject the other lands in the hands of the alienees for value to the payment of this balance, and from that decree this appeal was taken.
    
      Pollard (& Sands, for the appellants.
    
      T. G. Jones and Bo. MoGandlish, for the appellees.
   Buchanan, «L,

delivered the opinion of the court.

The amount involved in this appeal is the difference between the debt asserted by the appellant in the lower court, and the amount paid upon it by sales of land made in that court. That difference being less than $500, this court has no jurisdiction, and, although no objection was made by the appellees upon the hearing to the jurisdiction of the court, the appeal must be dismissed as improvidently awarded.

Appeal dismissed.