Court Opinion

ID: 9830399
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:10:37.581924+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:20.911641
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
In 3 Jones on Mortgages (7th Ed.) § 1620, the reason for the equity rule that the foreclosure on several tracts all covered by the same mortgage in the inverse order of their alienation is stated as follows:
“This order of equity proceeds upon the supposition that each subsequent purchaser has actual or constructive notice, by the record of the deed or otherwise, of each prior conveyance, by the mortgagor of portions of the premises.”
In Moran v. Wheeler, 87 Tex. 179, 27 S. W. 54, the following was said:
“It is the policy of the law to require that all matters affecting the title to lands should be placed upon the public records, so that one who seeks to purchase it may safely judge of the validity of the title. When a purchaser who seeks to buy land has examined the records of titles, and finds nothing to indicate that there is an adverse claim, and he is not in possession of any facts that would put him upon inquiry as to any matter not of record, he has the right to presume that any person claiming an adverse right would have placed the same upon record, and that there is none.”
In that case it was held that it was within the power of the assignee of a vendor’s lien note to take a written assignment of the vendor’s lien and to place it upon record, and that, in the absence of such a record, a subsequent mortgagee of the land took a lien superior to the vendor’s lien where the deed records showed that the vendor in whose favor the note was made had executed a release of such lien. To the same effect is Mansur Tebbetts Imp. Co. v. Beer, 19 Tex. Civ. App. 311, 45 S. W. 972; Lubbock State Bank v. Wooten Gro. Co., 179 S. W. 1141; Biswell v. Gladney, 182 S. W. 1168.
[3] The vendor’s lien reserved by J. D. Magee to secure the payment of the purchase-money notes for the Jenkins tract passed to the Citizens’ National Bank of Abilene as an incident to those notes; but there was no transfer of record indicating that transaction, while the deeds from J. D. Magee to L. V. Magee and also to T. R. and J. W. Rhodes were duly recorded.
Whether or not the transaction between J. D. Magee and the bank, toy virtue of which the bank took the Jenkins notes as collateral security for money owing to it by J. D. Magee, antedated the sale by J. D. Ma-gee to L. V. Magee, or the sale to T. R. and J. W. Rhodes, does not appear in the court’s findings of fact; nor is the evidence shown in the statement of facts by any means clear upon those issues, which seem to have been treated by the court as immaterial in view of the fact that the Jenkins notes were hypothecated to the bank before their maturity and for valuable consideration. And upon our original consideration of the ease we were of the same opinion, but, after a more mature consideration, we have reached the conclusion that the question whether or not either the L. Y. Magee tract or the T. R. and J. W. Rhodes tract should be subjected to the payment of plaintiff’s mortgage debt before resort had to the Jenkins tract, upon which the bank has a lien, should be governed by the rules applicable to innocent purchasers of, and lienholders on, real estate, which involve our registration statutes rather than by the law protecting innocent purchasers of promissory notes not secured toy such liens.
If the sale of the L. Y. Magee tract occurred prior to the hypothecation of the Jenkins notes to the bank, or if at the time of such purchase L. Y. Magee had neither actual nor constructive notice of such hypothecation, then we are of the opinion that the interest o.f the bank in the Jenkins tract should be sold for the purpose of satisfying plaintiff’s debt before resort to the Magee tract, and the same conclusion applies to the tract sold to T. R. and J. W. Rhodes. When J. D. Magee sold the Jenkins tract, the superior title as well as the vendor’s lien was retained by him. Such lien, considered separate and apart from the superior title, was an interest in the land itself, and, if J. D. Magee had never parted with it, clearly the owners of all tracts sold by him could have claimed that it should be subjected to the payment of plaintiff’s debt before recourse to any of those tracts. The bank, which now *368owns that lien; stands in Ms shoes, with no greater rights with respect to the owners of the Magee tract and of the tract sold to T, R. and J. W. Rhodes, except such as may result from the law 'applicable in case of the purchase of an interest in the land or the acquisition of a lien thereon.
For the reasons noted, the motions of appellants for rehearing are granted, the judgment of the trial court as between the bank and appellants is reversed, and the cause is remanded for á new trial of -all issues between those parties. The judgment as between the other’ parties to the suit, of which no complaint is made here, is undisturbed, and upon another trial the court will render the same judgment as between them as was rendered before, to the end that there shall be but one final judgment; it appearing that, whatever may be the judgment as between the bank and appellants, the final results to the other parties will be the same.