86 Pa. Super. 437 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1925
Argued April 24, 1925. The sole question raised by this appeal is whether equity has jurisdiction to order the satisfaction of a mortgage to be cancelled when the signature to the satisfaction piece was forged and the certificate of its acknowledgment was false and fraudulent.
The court below sustained the demurrer filed by W.R. Alter, one of the defendants to the plaintiff's bill in equity, praying that the satisfaction of the mortgage given him by the defendant Brown, and covering the real estate now owned by the defendant Mockus, be cancelled as a forgery, on the ground that there was a full and complete remedy at law; and dismissed the bill.
It is undoubted that on the trial of a scire facias sur mortgage the plaintiff may show that an alleged satisfaction of the mortgage was a forgery: Lancaster v. Smith,
Relief from fraud in all its forms has always been peculiarly the province of equity. In Wagner v. Fehr,
In a case such as this one, where the real estate covered by the mortgage has been twice conveyed subject to the lien of the mortgage and the grantees have respectively assumed its payment, and where the land has been encumbered by another mortgage which claims a first lien; where the rights of a number of persons may be affected by the mortgage and its accompanying bond in different respects and relations, (see Keene Home v. Startzell,
Bills in equity to cancel the satisfaction or release of a mortgage entered by fraud or mistake have been upheld by our Supreme Court in Independent B. L. Assn. v. Real Estate Title Co.,
In none of the cases relied upon by the court below and the appellee was it even suggested that a bill in equity would not lie to cancel a satisfaction of mortgage falsely or fraudulently entered. They only decided that such forgery or fraud could be interposed as a defense to the scire facias sur mortgage. The position taken by the defendants in those cases, or at least some of them, was that a bill in equity was the only mode of relief. See West's App., supra, p. 346; Cummings v. Horter,
The decree is reversed, and the demurrer filed by the appellee, W.R. Alter, is overruled, with leave to answer.
Costs on this appeal to be paid by appellee. *443