Court Opinion

ID: 3306985
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 17:21:30.228484+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:58:59.745223
License: Public Domain

On petition for rehearing in Bank the Court in Bank rendered the following opinion June 2, 1905: —
In a petition for rehearing the appellant cites the recent decision of the supreme court of the United States in Hooker v.Burr, 194 U.S. 415, and insists that it is contrary to the views stated in the opinion of Commissioner Cooper herein. The case was not cited in the briefs of counsel upon which the case was submitted, nor referred to in the opinion. Upon an examination of the opinion in that case I am satisfied that it is not decisive of the case at bar.
It involved the validity, as against a purchaser at a foreclosure sale, of a law enacted after the execution of the mortgage and before the decree of foreclosure, reducing the rate of interest on the purchase money to be paid by a redemptioner from two per cent a month, as previously allowed, to one per cent a month. (Stats. 1895, p. 225.) The opinion also refers to another law of this state (Stats. 1897, p. 41), increasing the time allowed for redemption from six to twelve months, which is the law here in question; but as the redemption there involved was in fact made within six months, the validity of this law was not in issue. The suit was by the purchaser to compel the sheriff to execute to him a deed pursuant to the sale, notwithstanding the payment of redemption money with interest at one per cent a month. The decision is to the effect that the law was valid against such purchaser. The ground of the decision is, that the purchaser is not a party to the contract of mortgage, and cannot invoke the constitutional *Page 632 
protection afforded to it, but that his contract regarding the right to redeem was a contract made under the law in force at the time of the sale. The court says: "Upon principle, we cannot see how an independent purchaser, having no connection with the mortgage, excepting as he became such purchaser at the foreclosure sale, can raise the question in his own behalf in relation to the validity of legislation as to redemption and rate of interest which existed at the time he made his purchase. . . . In our view the independent purchaser must, under the facts herein, abide by the law as it stood at the time of his purchase."
If this proposition is to be taken as broadly as the language would warrant, it would, of course, apply to all sheriff's sales, and to all laws affecting them, so far as the rights of purchasers thereunder are concerned, and as the relation of the defendant herein to the case is that of a purchaser only, it might be said that his rights depend on and are measured by the law in force when he purchased. The language of the decision must, of course, be interpreted with reference to the particular law there considered. So understood, I do not think it can be applied to the law here in question. It must be conceded, in view of the fact that it has been so decided by the United States supreme court, which is the paramount authority on such questions, that the law which prescribes the amount of interest on the purchase money which must be paid to redeem land from a foreclosure or execution sale is the only law on which the purchaser can rely, and is the measure of his rights in that particular. It does not follow that the same is true of the law which fixes the period allowed after the sale within which the debtor may redeem and during which he may remain in possession of the land. The rights of the parties in regard to the land reach farther back and must depend on the rights of the creditor. The purchaser must necessarily obtain all the estate of the debtor in the land which the creditor was empowered to sell. A power to subject property to sale which does not include the power to transfer to the purchaser all the estate sold is no power at all with respect to the estate not subject to such transfer. By the law which became part of his contract the creditor in this case was entitled, for the payment of his debt, to subject to sale the entire estate of the debtor in the land, save and except the *Page 633 
right of possession for six months. This right necessarily included the right to transfer all of his estate to the purchaser at the sale. The subsequent law, purporting to carve out of this estate and reserve to the debtor an additional term of six months, which is an estate for years, would clearly violate the obligation of the original contract. The purchaser obtains all the right of the creditor with respect to the property subject to sale. The case cannot be distinguished in principle from Bronson
v. Kinzie, 1 How. 311; Howard v. Bugbee, 24 How. 461; and Barnitz
v. Beverly, 163 U.S. 118, which declare laws allowing or increasing the period of redemption invalid as to pre-existing mortgages, nor from McCracken v. Hayward, 2 How. 608, and Gantley
v. Ewing, 3 How. 707, holding laws requiring the appraisement of property and prohibiting the sale thereof for less than a certain proportion of the appraised value invalid against previous contracts, and Edwards v. Kearzey, 96 U.S. 595, and Gunn v.Barry, 15 Wall. 610, establishing the same rule concerning laws providing a homestead or additional exemptions. In all such cases the creditor would obtain no benefit whatever from the constitutional provision in his favor if he could not by means of his legal process transfer to the purchaser the property, or estate therein, attempted to be withheld by the subsequent law.