164 P. 533 | Mont. | 1917
delivered the opinion of the court.
The correctness of the judgment from which this appeal is taken depends upon whether the plaintiff has a valid lien, under section 7291, Bevised Codes, upon the property of the respondent Nick Baatz. As and for such lien the plaintiff filed in the proper office a document comprising: (1) An unsigned notice of lien claim, reciting, among other things, that the claimant furnished certain materials for the Nick Baatz building, erected on lot 1, in block 414, of the original town site of Great Falls, Cascade county, Montana; “that the value of the said materials amounted to the sum of $2,707.93, as will more fully appear, reference being had to an itemized statement of account of said materials hereunto annexed, marked ‘Exhibit A,’ and hereof made a part”; (2) the following matter, just after the notice: “ [Venue.] Charles S. O’Brien, being first duly sworn, on oath deposes and says: That he is the managing agent for the Crane & Ordway Company, a corporation, the party in the f oreging notice of lien and statement of account of the amount due said Crane & Ordway Company for the materials therein described, after allowing all credits and offsets; that said notice and statement
The appellant, conceding, as it must, that the affidavit should verify the other two things necessary to make up the lien, to-wit, the account and the description, insists that the affidavit which appears at the end of “Exhibit A, Itemized Statement of Account,” that is to say, item (4) above, does so because the “account, ’ ’ to which it refers, means the narration embraced in the entire document, including the description. If this were true, the lien should be sustained, for no set form or order is required (Wertz v. Lamb, 43 Mont. 477, 482, 117 Pac. 89); but the true meaning of “account,” as used in section 7291, is not as contended, and is not the meaning intended to be conveyed by the affidavit, item (4). This affidavit does not assume to verify the description at all, and does not verify the account itself as the statute requires. The account must be a just and true one, “after allowing all credits,” and must be verified as such. The purpose of the affidavit is clear enough. It is not merely to
The judgment appealed from is affirmed.
'Affirmed.