142 Va. 559 | Va. | 1925
delivered the opinion of the court.
This was a suit for specific performance of a contract •of sale of real estate brought by the appellant against the appellee, C. S. McNulty. There was a demurrer to the bill on the ground that the property had not been ¡advertised for the time required by the deed of trust under which the sale was made. The trial court sustained the demurrer and dismissed the bill.
The deed of trust under which the appellee acted, and which is exhibited with his bill, provided “that in case of ¡sale, the same shall be made after first advertising the time, place and terms for ten days in some newspaper published in the city of Roanoke, Virginia.” The advertisement was made on October 28th, 29th, 30th and :31st, and November 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th, 1923, •of a sale to be made on November 6, 1923. On the day ■fixed for the sale, it was postponed at the instance of McNulty till November 14, 1923, and the advertisement reappeared in the newspaper the next day, with
Appellant, however, insists that the adjournment or postponement of the sale from November 6th to November 14th, and the publication thereof cured the defect of notice, if there was any. The right to postpone a sale which has been once duly advertised cannot be denied, and sometimes the circumstances are such that it is the duty of the trustee to postpone the sale (Rohrer v. Strickland, 116 Va. 755, 82 S. E. 711), but a notice which is insufficient in the first instance cannot be patched up in this way. In order to fill out the time a new day of sale has to be fixed, and where, as in the instant case, the new date is less than ten days from the first date, neither date has been advertised for the length of time required by the deed, and the object and the purpose of the deed in requiring an advertisement of ten days is defeated. A sale which cannot be made on the day appointed because the notice thereof has not been given for the length of time required by the deed under which it is authorized, cannot be postponed to a later date without giving notice of the new date for the length of time required by the deed. It is in effect a proceeding de novo.
If the original notice of the sale- conforms to the deed, the sale may be postponed, but whether the postponement must be for the same length of time as the original notice is a question upon which the authorities are in hopeless conflict, but which we are not called upon to decide, as the original notice, in the instant ease, was insufficient. 19 R. C. L. page 605; 19 Am. St. Rep. 291;. 92 Am. St. Rep. 590; L. R. A. 1915B, page 643.
If the trustee had sold on November 6th, the first day fixed for the sale, after only nine days notice, the sale would have been invalid.
In that case the advertisement was for only six weeks, while the statute required twelve weeks.
When the trustee, at the instance of McNulty, postponed the sale from November 6th to November 14th, the trustee did not alter his position for the worse, for he had no power to sell on November 6th. Hence, there was no estoppel against McNulty as claimed by the trustee. Nor could the powers of the trustee be enlarged by the request of McNulty.
The parties interested had the right to waive the ten days’ notice required by the deed and permit a sale on shorter notice, but they never did so. It appears from the bill in the instant case that the complainant had the first deed of trust on the property sold, and that there were several later deeds of trust thereon covering the full value of the property. These parties and the grantor in the deeds of trust had the right to redeem the property within the ten days required for the advertisement (Preston v. Johnson, supra), or to have consented to a sale on shorter notice, but they did neither, and none of them are parties to this suit. They are not bound by the proceedings herein, and none of them are parties to the deed tendered by the trustee with his bill. There was nothing to cure the defective sale to McNulty, even if it be treated as voidable only, and he
