Court Opinion

ID: 6427073
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-06-25 12:04:50.816776+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:52:02.253000
License: Public Domain

Holmes, C. J.
The bill of sale is shown to have been a mortgage by the agreement made as part of the same transaction. It is plain that if Nutter paid his note Chick was not to keep the goods. The only goods embraced by the instrument which were owned by Nutter at the time, and which are still on hand, are the fixtures. The rest is after acquired property. The instruments were not recorded, and possession was not taken by Chick of any part of the property before the assignment to the defendant and possession taken by him.
The old notion with regard to conveyances or mortgages of after acquired property was that they were simply void. Now such instruments are recognized as contracts, which on the acquisition of the property may operate as conveyances if they sufficiently identify the thing conveyed, and if other necessary conditions are satisfied. Blanchard v. Cooke, 144 Mass. 207, 225, 227. The other necessary condition, if they are not recorded, is that possession must be taken before other rights intervene. In this case we need not consider whether such an instrument could be recorded effectively after the chattels to which it applies have been acquired and the instrument begins to operate as a mortgage properly so called. It is settled that recording at an earlier date is not notice, and it may be that recording at the later moment would be equally ineffectual. *59We express no opinion upon that. If it be true, then the only way in which the mortgagee can make his mortgage valid as against others than the mortgagor is by taking possession. The policy of the law is not to be evaded. In this case he neither recorded nor took possession.
The defendant was not a party to the mortgage. Bingham v. Jordan, 1 Allen, 373. It follows that the mortgage was not valid against him even as to the after acquired stock of goods, and, a fortiori, as to the fixtures. Probably the ruling of the Superior Court was based on Wilson v. Esten, 14 R. I. 621, which construed the assignment as purporting to be subject to the mortgage. We could not adopt a similar construction in the assignment before us. It specifies the goods.
Of course the plaintiff could not sustain his action of replevin on his right as creditor to avoid the conveyance to the defendant. That right he could assert by an attachment, but not by a naked election to declare the conveyance void in the interest of the earlier conveyance to himself, which the law postpones to the defendant’s title. The same principle which makes the conveyance and delivery to the defendant good as against the mortgage at the moment when they were made keeps them good as against it. The fact that the later conveyance would give way to a still later attachment does not interfere with its priority over the mortgage.

Judgment for the defendant.