Court Opinion

ID: 9807496
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:07:06.164575+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:40:31.498818
License: Public Domain

Douglas, J.,
dissenting : I cannot concur either in the opinion or the judgment of the Court. It finds no support in the case of Winston v. Biggs, 117 N. C., 206, for the decision in that case is expressly and repeatedly put upon the ground that the mortgage to Winston was prior to the deed of assignment to Biggs. Therefore Winston could not be required to elect between his prior lien and his pro rata share, because the two were not inconsistent. It is only bet ween inconsist*366ent benefits that the doctrine of election can be made to apply. As Winston’s mortgage was prior to the assignment, all that the latter deed could convey was the equity of redemption in the' property covered by the mortgage. As the assignor is presumed to have known this, it may also be presumed that he intended to give to Winston by the deed of assignment an additional security to his mortgage. Winston by insisting upon his prior security did not abstract anything from the assignment. The property covered by his lien had already been specifically appropriated by the debtor to the payment of his debt ; and the subsequent assignee, taking in subordination thereto, had no right to complain at its enforcement.
The case at bar is diametrically the opposite. The assignor Reynolds cannot by any possibility be presumed to have intended a duplicate security to the plaintiffs. His expressed intention is to the contrary. In his assignment, he expressly conveyed all his land in Virginia to his trustee for the purposes of the assignment. At that time, the plaintiffs had no lien upon the Virginia land, and their subsequent levy was in derogation of the assignment by diverting a large and valuable part of the assets therein conveyed.
After defeating the assignment to the utmost extent of their ability, they now claim their full pro rata share of that repudiated conveyance. I do not think this can be done, certainly not if equity is equality, or if clean hands mean anything but full hands. I think they should be put to their election, and required either to surrender to the trustee the property which they have taken from him, or keep that property and relinquish all claim under the assignment. In the words of my old Scottish ancestors, I do not think they should be *367permitted to “Approbate and reprobate”, the same deed; or in the homely Anglo-Saxon of a great English Judge, to “blow hot and cold with the same breath.”
In Sigmon v. Hawn, 87 N. C., 450, 453, this court, in speaking of the doctrine of election, says: “The foundation of the rule is that no one can be permitted to accept and reject the same instrument.”
This rule, originally invoked chiefly in relation to wills, has become practically of universal application to all written instruments in any way operating as conveyances. In fact, the rule appears to me to rest on greater justice than where the grantor deeds away his own property than where the devisor disposes of property that is not his own. There are many cases in our Reports, in my opinion sustaining the views I have herein expressed; and, as far as I can find, none to the contrary. It seems so clearly enunciated by Pearson, C. J., in Rankin v. Jones, 55 N. C., 169, 172, that I can find no better conclusion than the following quotation: “These two prayers are clearly inconsistent; by the one, the plaintiffs seek to set up an equity adverse and against the deed of trust, on the ground that W. F. Jones has no right to make it because of their prior equity or quasi lien; by the other they seek to set up an equity under the deed of trust. This cannot be allowed. ”