41 N.H. 456 | N.H. | 1860
The case before us finds that the defendant, as a deputy sheriff', seized and sold a quantity of hay, grain, &c., as the property of one Corydon D. Keyes, and as the product of his farm for the year 1859. The plaintiff' sets up a title to the property so sold, claiming to hold it by virtue of a chattel mortgage, duly executed from said Keyes to him, for the purpose of securing his debt against the mortgagor, the said mortgage being duly executed and recorded, on the first day of January, 1859. The plaintiff brings his action of trespass; and the defendant justifies the taking of the property at issue, by virtue of a writ in favor of one Blood, a creditor of Keyes. The defendant denies the validity of the plaintiff’s mortgage, and denies that the plaintiff had any title or subsisting lien on the property in question, on October 20, 1859; and this is the material question involved in this case. The parties to the mortgage adopted the following comprehensive description in their deed: “ all the hay and grain, of every kind, that grows on the farm, on which I now live, the present year.” It is admitted that there was winter rye and rye straw sold by the defendant as part of the crop of that farm that year, and which was sown in the fall of 1858; that the hay, the product of the farm for the year 1859, was seized and sold, of the value of $113.49; and that the other productions were raised from seed sown in the spring of 1859. The plaintiff relies upon the first section of chapter 138 of the Compiled Laws, as giving a foundation for his title: “ Personal property, and crops of any description,
It is the duty of the court, in giving a construction to the present deed before us, to carry into effect, as far as possible, the intention of the parties, by giving a liberal and reasonable construction to it, so that res valeat, et non pereat. If we confine the terms of the grant to the actual grass or rye then in the soil of the grantor at the time of the execution of the deed, it may be inferred that the parties must have had knowledge that the grantor’s farm had then, in actual or potential existence, the living agencies that do grow or produce both grain and hay. Here were, then, the living roots of the winter xye and grass then abiding in the soil, that formed the just basis for a crop of like kind," according to the invariable laws of vegetable growth, and of course a just foundation of the contract into which the parties chose to enter. It may not be unreasonable to limit the application of the deed to the product of such hay and grain as might grow from the rye that had been sown, and from the grass roots, to the exclusion of any subsequent spring crop. This construction will excuse us from doing that degree of injustice which would be involved in rejecting the deed as a nullity, or as being void for uncertainty, when, by a fair interpretation, we give effect to what the parties most obviously intended.
From the foregoing cases, and a fair construction of our own statute in reference to this subject, we may derive authority to treat the hay and winter rye, embraced in the mortgage to the plaintiff, as personal property which he has a right to claim, and in which a legal title had duly ■vested by operation of law. The plaintiff, having the right to the property in question, can maintain the action of trespass to recover the value of the hay and winter rye, with interest from the time of its conversion.