Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/164/1/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 08:34:52+00:00

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(1) That this Court will not go behind the findings of fact in the trial court to inquire whether they are supported by the evidence.
(2) That G's action was commenced within the time required by the statutes existing when it was brought.
(3) That the judgment of the court below thus establishing the respective liens of G and of C was correct.
A clause in a mortgage which subjects subsequently acquired property to its lien is valid, and extends to equitable as well as to legal titles to such property.
Under Rev.Stat. §§ 2339, 2340, no right or title to land or to a right of way over or through it or to the use of water from a well thereafter to be dug vests, as against the government, in the party entering upon possession from the mere fact of such possession, unaccompanied by the performance of labor thereon, and as the title in this case did not pass until the ditch was completed, the mortgage was not a valid encumbrance until after the liens of G and of C had attached, and will not be held to relate back for the purpose of effecting an injustice.
The Act of March 12, 1890, is to be construed as a continuation of the act in force when the Garland contract was made, extending the time in which an action to foreclose its lien should be commenced, and, as this was done before the time came for taking proceedings to effect a sale under the lien, it was not an alteration of the right or the remedy as those terms are used in the statute.
in favor of the respondents, William Garland and Corey Brothers & Company.
"Provided, that the repeal of said acts or parts of acts or any of them shall not affect any right or remedy, nor abate any suit or action or proceeding existing, instituted or pending under the laws hereby repealed."
The answer then set forth that the plaintiff did not commence his action to enforce his lien within the ninety days given by the act in force when the work was commenced under the contract, and therefore the lien no longer existed at the time the action was commenced to enforce it.
they asked for a decree enforcing their lien as a prior encumbrance to that of the mortgage upon the property of the Bear Lake Company.
The Bear Lake Company set up the same facts as a defense against the plaintiff's cause of action that were alleged by the Mortgage Trust Company, and it answered the claim of Corey Brothers & Company by alleging that the mortgage to the mortgage trust company had been executed and duly recorded, and was in existence long before and at the time of the execution of the agreement which Corey Brothers & Company made with the Bear Lake Company, and that therefore the lien of Corey Brothers & Company was subsequent and subject to the lien of the mortgage upon the after-acquired property of the Bear Lake Company.
The case came on for trial upon the issues thus found, and the court, after hearing the evidence, gave judgment in favor of plaintiff and of Corey Brothers & Company, establishing their liens, respectively, upon an equality, and making them prior and superior to the lien of the mortgage trust company by reason of its mortgage, and decreeing the sale of the property to satisfy such liens. 9 Utah 350.
The contest in this case lies between the plaintiff and the firm of Corey Brothers & Company, on the one hand, and the mortgage trust company, on the other. The former demand priority of lien for their respective claims over that of the mortgage held by the mortgage trust company upon the property of the Bear Lake Company.
"SEC. 21. No lien claimed by virtue of this act shall hold the property longer than one year after filing the statement firstly described in section 10 unless an action be commenced within that time to enforce the same."
This action was commenced within one year after filing the statement of the plaintiff's claim, and he therefore insists that it was commenced in time, and that his lien should have priority. In that contention, he is met by the claim of the mortgage company that the section referred to does not affect the plaintiff's case, as the contract between him and the Bear Lake Company was entered into, and a large amount of the work was done under it, prior to March, 1890, and while the act of 1888 was in force, and that, by the express terms of the proviso in § 32 of the act of 1890, the repeal of the act of 1888 did not affect any right or remedy nor abate any suit or proceeding existing, instituted, or pending, under the laws thereby repealed.
The terms of the act of 1890 are thus cited as a limitation of the plaintiff to the provisions of the act of 1888. If plaintiff be thus confined, he cannot maintain this action, as he did not commence it until sometime after the expiration of the ninety days from the date of filing his claim.
provisions have not been in force. Notwithstanding, therefore, this formal repeal, it is, as we think, entirely correct to say that the new act should be construed as a continuation of the old with the modification contained in the new act. This is the same principle that is recognized and asserted in Steamship Co. v. Joliffe, 2 Wall. 459. In that case, there was a repeal in terms of the former statute, and yet it was held that it was not the intention of the legislature to thereby impair the right to fees which had arisen under the act which was repealed. As the provisions of the new act took effect simultaneously with the repeal of the old one, the Court held that the new one might more properly be said to be substituted in the place of the old one, and to continue in force, with modifications, the provisions of the old act, instead of abrogating or annulling them and reenacting the same as a new and original act.
It is true that the law in the Joliffe case did not contain any saving of or provision for the rights and remedies of the pilot, but the foundation of the reasoning by which the court concluded that the new should be treated as a continuation of the old statute with modifications did not rest alone upon this omission. It was chiefly based upon the facts above stated -- the similarity of the subject matters of the two statutes, and that the effect was a continuation of the old statute as modified by the new, notwithstanding the use of language which formally repealed the old statute.
The omission to provide for the rights of the pilot does not, therefore, detract from the authority of the case for the purpose for which it is here cited.
the passage of the new act, the proposed lienor has only entered upon the execution of his contract and has not yet completed the work under it, we think that, at least as to him, the provision enlarging the time in which to commence the action to foreclose the lien is applicable, and there is no retroactive effect thereby given to that provision of the new act.
which to commence the action, and therefore the proviso did not take the plaintiff's case out of the application of the section in the new act providing such enlarged time.
Under the construction given by us to the act of 1890, as a continuation of that of 1888, with modifications, the question as to which act the lien is claimed under is not specially material. In effect, it is one act, and those labors, etc., which were performed before the passage of the act of 1890 are added to those performed thereafter. The lien is really claimed by virtue of the fact that, at the time when the contract was entered into, the statute of Utah provided such a right or remedy, and, although the action to foreclose the lien was commenced under the provisions of the act of 1890, yet the right itself commenced under the old act. That right is not affected by any provision of the new act, and although it is claimed that the right and the remedy must go together under the old act, as they are preserved by the same language, yet, for the reasons already given, the time in which to commence the action is no part of the remedy as that word is used in the proviso, and an extension of that time may be provided for in the new act without in any way affecting the right or remedy of the lienor where the facts are the same as in this case.
It may be assumed that where a statute creates a right not known to the common law, and provides a remedy for the enforcement of such right, and limits the time within which the remedy must be pursued, the remedy in such case forms a part of the right, and must be pursued within the time prescribed or else the right and remedy are both lost; but it does not therefore follow that the plaintiff's right to a lien and to maintain this action must be based solely upon the act of 1888.
remedy would not thereby be altered, because the remedy consisted in filing the statement and in commencing the action. The time in which to do either would be matter of procedure only. Hence, when the act of 1890 was passed, which enlarged the time in which to commence the action already provided for, such enlargement did not affect any right or remedy of the plaintiff. It did not affect either, because the provision applied only to procedure, and not to right or remedy, and therefore the plaintiff could avail himself of the time given him by the act of 1890 in which to commence his action, as one of the steps in procedure by which the remedy for a violation of the contract by the enforcement of foreclosure of the lien would be accomplished.
2. We are of the opinion also that the claim of Corey Brothers & Company for a lien superior to that of the mortgage trust company was properly allowed. That company claims a superiority of lien because of the clause in its mortgage by which the Bear Lake Company mortgaged to it, in addition to the property then owned by the lake company, all its after-acquired property.
A clause in a mortgage which subjects subsequently acquired property to the lien of the mortgage is a valid clause. Toledo, Delphos &c. Railroad v. Hamilton, 134 U. S. 296; Central Trust Co. v. Kneeland, 138 U. S. 414; Galveston Railroad v. Cowdrey, 11 Wall. 459, 78 U. S. 481.
Such a mortgage, as against the mortgagor and subsequent encumbrancers, attaches itself to the after-acquired property as fast as it comes into existence or as fast as the canal or railroad is built, and the lien of the mortgagee is held to be superior to that of the constructor. The lien of the mortgage extends also to an equitable as well as to a legal title to the property subsequently acquired. 134 and 138 U.S., supra.
The company claims that under the principles decided in these cases, the lien of its mortgage is superior to the claim of Corey Brothers & Company.
the rule recognized in this Court -- that even under the after-acquired property clause in a mortgage, if property be burdened with an encumbrance or lien at the very time of coming into the possession or ownership of the mortgagor, such encumbrance remains prior and superior to the lien of the mortgage, although it was actually subsequent thereto in point of time. United States v. New Orleans, 12 Wall. 362; Fosdick v. Schall, 99 U. S. 251.
"The right of way upon which the canal was constructed, which right of way is described in the finding 19, consisted largely of public land, and was obtained by the defendant the Bear Lake & River Waterworks & Irrigation Company under and by virtue of the act of Congress of 1866, being section ___, Revised Statutes of the United States. A large portion of said right of way was obtained under contract with one Kerr by which Kerr agreed, upon the construction of said canal through his land, to give said right of way. The other portions of said canals were purchased by the Bear Lake Company at various times from individual proprietors after May 1, 1890."
of courts, the possessors and owners of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same, and the right of way for the construction of ditches and canals for the purposes herein specified is acknowledged and confirmed, provided however that whenever after the passage of this act any person or persons shall, in the construction of any ditch or canal, injure or damage the possession of any settler on the public domain, the party committing such injury or damage shall be liable to the party injured for such injury or damage."
Congress subsequently passed another Act, approved July 9, 1870, entitled "An act to amend an act granting the right of way to ditch and canal owners over the public lands and for other purposes." 16 Stat. 217, 218.
"SEC. 2340. None of the rights conferred by sections five, eight, and nine of the act of which this is amendatory shall be abrogated by this act, and the same are hereby extended to all public lands affected by this act, and all patents granted or preemption or homesteads allowed shall be subject to any vested and accrued water rights or rights to ditches and reservoirs and in connection with such water rights as may be acquired under or recognized by the ninth section of the act of which this act is amendatory."
The trial court made one other finding of fact (the thirty-third), by which it was found that the work done by Garland and by Corey Brothers & Company was done for the Bear Lake Company, which company, with the consent of the owners of the legal title, entered into possession of the land through which the canal ditches were dug, and then, after so entering into possession, the company consented to and permitted the plaintiff Garland, and also Corey Brothers & Company, to do the work under their contracts with the company in digging and excavating the canal.
upon which to base the same. This exception as to the lack of evidence to support the findings we cannot consider, and we think that the objection as to the pleading is not well taken.
Upon appeal from the supreme court of a territory, this Court is precluded under the statute from reviewing any question of fact, and the finding of the court below is conclusive upon this Court as to all such questions. The jurisdiction of this Court on such an appeal, apart from exceptions duly taken to rulings on the admission or rejection of evidence, is limited to determining whether the findings of fact support the judgment. Stringfellow v. Cain, 99 U. S. 619; Neslin v. Wells, 104 U. S. 428; Eilers v. Boatman, 111 U. S. 356; Idaho & Oregon land Co. v. Bradbury, 132 U. S. 509; Mammoth Mining Co. v. Salt Lake Machine Co., 151 U. S. 450.
So far as the public land is concerned, over or through which these ditches for the canal were dug, the statutes above cited create no title, legal or equitable, in the individual or company that simply takes possession of such land. The government enacts that anyone may go upon its public lands for the purpose of procuring water, digging ditches for canals, etc., and when rights have become vested and accrued which are recognized and acknowledged by the local customs, laws, and decisions of courts, such rights are acknowledged and confirmed. Under this statute, no right or title to the land, or to a right of way over or through it, or to the use of water from a well thereafter to be dug, vests, as against the government, in the party entering upon possession, from the mere fact of such possession, unaccompanied by the performance of any labor thereon.
by priority of possession, and the government will and does recognize such rights as between those parties. This is the principle running through the cases cited by the counsel for appellants. In Sullivan v. Northern Spy Mining Co., 11 Utah 438, which is one of those cases, the priority of possession of the person who entered upon the public land and dug the well was recognized as thereby making a superior title to the use of the water from the well over that acquired by a person who was the subsequent purchaser of the land from the government. In that case, the well had been dug and the condition fulfilled. If no well had ever been dug and a reasonable time for digging it had passed, the mere priority of possession would have given no superior title to the land over that acquired by the grantee from the government. It is the doing of the work, the completion of the well, or the digging of the ditch within a reasonable time from the taking of possession, that gives the right to use the water in the well, or the right of way for the ditches of the canal upon or through the public land. Until the completion of this work, or, in other words, until the performance of the condition upon which the right to forever maintain possession is based, the person taking possession has no title, legal or equitable, as against the government. What, if any, equitable claims a party might have upon the government who did a large amount of work but finally failed to complete the necessary amount to secure the water or right of way it is not necessary to determine or discuss. Those equities would not, in any event, amount to an equitable title to the right of way, or to the use of the water, and so need not be here considered.
with this lien, which remains superior to that of the mortgage. The point is that the mortgagor never had any claim or title of a legal or equitable nature to the land upon which this work was done during the whole time that the work was going on, and when the title did thereafter vest in the Bear Lake Company by virtue of the work done by Corey Brothers & Company, it became burdened with the lien created by virtue of the work so done upon it. If, prior to the doing of the work, the Bear Lake Company had simply purchased the land or entered into any such agreement with the owner thereof as gave it an equitable title to the same, then the property would not have come to the Bear Lake Company burdened with any lien and the work thereafter done upon it in the shape of digging the ditch, etc., would not have given ground for any priority of lien as against the mortgage of the trust company.
The material fact to remember is that the sole title to the land or the right of way which the Bear Lake Company has, whether legal or equitable, is transferred to that company only by virtue of the work previously done upon the land by the constructors, who thereby fulfill the condition upon the performance of which such transfer or the right of such transfer depended. Under these circumstances, it is proper to say that the title to the land was transferred subject to the constructors' lien for the work which made the transfer possible, and by means of which it was accomplished. The claim is also urged that, even upon the theory of the appellees, the title to the portion of the land or right of way upon which Garland, the plaintiff, had worked, had passed to the Bear Lake Company, and had come under the lien of the mortgage before any work was done by the Corey Brothers & Company firm, and as to that portion of the work, the claim is made that the firm could have no lien prior to the mortgage. The fact is that, at the time when the firm commenced work, in May, 1890, the plaintiff Garland had not completed his work, and did not complete it until along in December following. The title had not, therefore, passed to the Bear Lake Company when Corey Brothers & Company commenced their work.
"All such liens shall relate back to the time of the commencement to do work or to furnish materials, and shall have priority over any and every lien or encumbrance subsequently intervening, or which may have been created prior thereto, but which was not then recorded, and of which the lienor under this act had no notice. Nothing herein contained shall be construed as impairing any valid encumbrance upon any such land, duly made and recorded before such work was commenced or the first of such materials were furnished."
The very question in issue is whether the mortgage was a valid encumbrance upon any after-acquired land prior to these liens. Inasmuch as the title to the right of way did not pass until the completion of the work, we hold the mortgage was not a valid encumbrance upon such right of way until that time, and that the title came to the Bear Lake Company burdened with the lien claimed by the lienor, which attached to the property at the very moment of, and simultaneously with, the vesting of such title in the company, and in priority to the lien of the mortgage.
This principle is in entire harmony with that laid down in the already cited cases of Galveston Railroad v. Cowdrey, 11 Wall. 459, and Toledo, Delphos &c. Railroad v. Hamilton, 134 U. S. 296, and with the cases therein referred to. In neither of the above-mentioned cases did the title to the property come into the hands of the company burdened with any lien. Most of the property in the first above-cited case came to the company before any work was done, and a small portion only was purchased by it after the work was done, and it was held that the lien of the mortgage upon the property, as after acquired, was superior to that of the constructor who did the work. His work did not transfer the title or create the condition upon which the vesting of the title could take place in the mortgagor, and consequently there was no basis for the claim that the property came to the mortgagor burdened with the lien.
In the Toledo case, the dock was built upon property to which the mortgagor had a good equitable title, and which was covered by the mortgage, just the same as if the title were a legal one, and it was held that the dock became subject to the lien of the mortgage, as prior and superior to any lien of the mechanics for construction. It was urged in that case that at the time the mechanic's lien was claimed to have been created, the legal title to the property sought to be affected was not in the railroad company, but was in one George W. Ballou, and therefore the mortgage of the property by the railroad company created no legal lien, and although, by the decree of foreclosure, the legal title was transferred to the mortgagor, yet it was transferred subject to the burden of the mechanic's lien. The Court held that the mortgagor had the equitable title to the property before foreclosure, and that the mortgage given by the mortgagor covered property to which it had an equitable title, as well as property to which it had a legal title. In the case at bar, the mortgagor never had any title at all, legal or equitable, until after the work had been performed by the constructors, and only then by virtue and through the means of such work.
of the conditions by it, the land came burdened with the lien upon it in favor of the constructor of the depot, and such lien was therefore superior to the lien of the mortgage.
It is said that, in any event, the title which finally vested in the Bear Lake Company by virtue of the completion of the work, as claimed by the respondents, relates back to the time when possession of the land over which the right of way existed was first taken, and that such possession was taken by the Bear Lake Company prior to any work's being done by either the plaintiff Garland or by the defendants Corey Brothers & Company, and the title thus became subject to the lien of the mortgage before the work was done by the lienors. This doctrine of relation, by which it is claimed that the lien of the mortgage attached to the right of way prior to the lien of the constructor, is a fiction only. It is indulged in for the purpose of thereby cutting off intervening adverse claims of third parties against the right or title set up and acquired by the first possessor. It will not be indulged in for the purpose of thereby effecting an injustice by subjecting the right of way to the prior lien of a mortgage when the existence of the title to the right of way in the Bear Lake Company was made possible only after and by the labor of the lienors. In such case, the actual fact will be considered, and not the fiction.
this property superior to that of the lienors and that the title to the property created by the lienors would come to the Bear Lake Company burdened with their lien. It is plain that in this light, the equity of the lienors is superior to that of the mortgagee, and their lien should, if possible, be preferred.
"All the right of way of the Bear Lake & River Company, as described in finding 19, was acquired by said Bear Lake & River Waterworks & Irrigation Company after the mechanic's lien of the plaintiff William Garland and the mechanic's lien of the defendants Corey Brothers & Company attached to the same."
exact facts relating to the purchase of the right of way after May 1, 1890, and as to the extent of such purchases from individuals, and as to the conditions upon which the purchases were made.
We will not in such case indulge in any presumptions unfavorable to the judgment and for the purpose of reversing it unless they are natural and probable, and such as ought to be drawn from the facts actually found by the court below. We do not find this to be the case here.
"any person having an assignable, transferable or conveyable interest or claim in or to any land, building, structure, or other property mentioned in this act, shall be deemed an owner."
work done, and we think such lien, when the work was completed and the statement of claim filed, was superior to the lien of the mortgage.

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