Court Opinion

ID: 8631933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:39:03.434015+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:55:47.895872
License: Public Domain

BLATCHFORD, District Judge.
Although the legal, registered title to the vessel was in a British owner, yet the mortgagees were the equitable and beneficial owners of the vessel and were mortgagees in possession, exercising ownership over the vessel and dealing with her as their own property. They paid to Potter the money which they paid to him, not as lenders of such money on mortgage, but as purchasers of the vessel. They paid him $4,800 as the purchase price of the vessel, while the amounts which purported to bé secured by the five mortgages made a total sum of $9,000. They took the mortgages to protect their interests as purchasers. In their hands, as purchasers of her, she was not a foreign vessel. It is clear, from the evidence of Benjamin F. Metcalf, one of the libellants, that he was aware, from his first knowledge of the connection of the mortgagees with the vessel, that they had taken the control of her as owners and purchasers, and had taken the mortgages, not as evidences of money loaned, but to protect their interest as purchasers and their control as owners, and that their possession of the vessel was a possession of ownership, and not to secure money loaned. Under these circumstances, no lien on the vessel arose out of any of the transactions of the libellants with the mortgagees or with the master of the vessel, and the libel must be dismissed, with costs.