Court Opinion

ID: 3306986
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 17:21:30.234916+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:58:59.746561
License: Public Domain

The case of Hooker v. Burr, 194 U.S. 415, upon which petitioner so confidently relies is not authority in this case because of the broad and vital distinction between a law extending the time of redemption from execution sales and a law reducing the rate of interest to be paid by a redemptioner. The former diminishes the estate which can be sold and necessarily impairs the security. If an independent purchaser cannot hold the entire estate subject to the mortgage or judgment lien the lienholder cannot sell the whole estate. No man will purchase and pay for what he cannot hold, and what no one will purchase has no salable value. The only possible method of securing the full rights of the lienholder is to uphold the title of his vendee to all that he is empowered by his contract or by the law to sell. But a law which merely reduces the rate of interest to be paid by a redemptioner, so far from impairing the security of a mortgagee *Page 634 
or judgment creditor, has the opposite effect. There are two classes of bidders at execution sales. One man desires to keep the property for use or as an investment for idle funds, and, it may be assumed, will offer its fair value if compelled to do so by the competition of other bidders. Another man has no desire to keep the property; his only object in bidding at the sale is to profit by the interest to be paid on a redemption. The competition of these two classes of bidders is of course advantageous alike to the execution creditor and to his debtor, and a law which induces either class to bid more nearly the fair value of the property than he otherwise would, so far from impairing the security, actually enhances it. I think it is demonstrable — assuming, as the fact is, that the current rate of interest on secured loans is less than twelve per cent — that a law which reduces the redemption rate from twenty-four to twelve per cent has a necessary tendency to induce one who is bidding with a view to redemption to bid higher than otherwise he would. For he cannot afford in any case to pay a sum which will make a redemption unprofitable to the execution debtor or a junior lienholder, and a simple illustration will show that he can afford to bid more nearly the fair value of the property when the redemption rate is twelve per cent than when it is twenty-four per cent. Suppose the property offered for sale to be fairly worth twelve hundred and fifty dollars; the man who is bidding solely with a view to a redemption cannot, if the rate is twenty-four per cent, afford to pay more than one thousand dollars, for at the end of a year the cost of redemption ($1,240) would be practically equal to the value of the property. Whereas, if the rate was twelve per cent he could better afford to pay eleven hundred dollars, for at the end of the year the cost of redemption would be only $1,232, leaving eighteen instead of ten dollars as the profit on redemption. Of course, it is not likely that so nice a calculation would or could often be made, but the illustration shows what the real tendency of a law reducing the redemption rate is. It redounds to the advantage of the parties to the contract and hurts no one but the speculative bidder, who is not in a position to complain.
This view reconciles the two lines of decision in this court and in the supreme court of the United States. A law extending the time of redemption is unconstitutional as to liens *Page 635 
accruing before its enactment because it impairs the security in which the creditor has a vested right. A law reducing the interest rate upon a redemption is not unconstitutional because it does not impair the security of the creditor or affect injuriously the interest of the debtor.
Rehearing denied.