33 N.J. Eq. 63 | New York Court of Chancery | 1880
The bill is filed to remove a cloud from title. Its object is to obtain a decree declaring null a certain assessment made by tbe city of Trenton, under its charter, upon the complainant’s land there, for a municipal improvement, and a sale made thereunder to the city. The bill alleges that the assessment and sale were illegal and invalid, and also that in 1876 a mortgage, upon the property was foreclosed in this court, in a suit to which the city was a party defendant, and that by the decree in that suit the city was foreclosed of all title to the premises under the assessment. The defendants have both demurred and pleaded. By the plea they plead that the validity of the assessment has been
It does not appear by the bill that the defendants were made parties to the foreclosure suit with respect to the assessment in question. It does not appear that it was alleged in the bill that the mortgage was prior in date to the assessment, or that the assessment was attacked or called in question in any way whatever in the suit, but merely that the city was a defendant, and, by the terms of the decree, was foreclosed of all estate, right, title and interest in the mortgaged premises, when sold under the decree, and that the complainant in this suit was the purchaser of the property at the sheriff’s sale under the decree. The averments of the bill in this respect are not sufficient to constitute any bar to the claim of the city under the assessment. Though the city was a defendant to the suit, yet if it was not called upon therein to answer as to the validity or lien of the assessment, or the validity of the sale under it, it is not barred by the decree. The object of the foreclosure suit was to foreclose the equity of redemption of the defendants in the property. But if the city had a title or claim paramount to the mortgage, it obviously was not embraced even in the terms of the barring clause of the decree; for it had no equity of redemption with respect to such claim, so far as the mortgage of the complainant in that suit was concerned, but as to such prior claim it was the complainant in the suit who had an equity to redeem it. Where a widow was made a party defendant to a bill for foreclosure, on other grounds than her
Nor would the plea have been good if the averments of the bill had been sufficient. If the solicitor by whom the service of subpcena was acknowledged was not authorized to do so, and if the ticket accompanying the subpcena did not mention the assessment or sale thereunder, the fact cannot avail the defendants as a bar to the claim of the complainant under the sheriff’s deed. The decree is his protection against all irregularities in the proceedings up to the decree. The rule is laid down by the court of errors and appeals that the decision of a domestic court of general jurisdiction, acting within the scope of its powers, has inherent in it such conclusive force that it cannot be challenged collaterally, and it definitively binds all parties embraced in it,