114 Iowa 220 | Iowa | 1901
Tlie question first discussed in this court is as to whether the loan is'usurious. Plaintiffs borrowed the sum of $1,400 of defendant corporation, and secured its payment by .a pledge of 14 shares of stock and a mortgage on real estate. After a number of payments had been made on said-debt, and on the tenth day of July, 1897, a new mortgage was executed for the balance claimed to be still due, viz.: $900, and the present action is founded upon the latter instrument.
Section 1898 of - the Code regulates the business and governs the contracts of b-uilding and loan associations, and, among other things, fixed the maximum interest rate which they may exact at 12 per cent. Section 1, chapter 48, Laws Twenty-eighth General Assembly extended the provisions of such section 1898 to all contracts of such associations with members, entered prior to the taking effect of the Code, and provided that such contracts might be enforced, “anything in the statutes in force when such contracts were made to the contrary notwithstanding.” Section 12, chapter 69, Acts - Twenty-eight General Assembly, repeals chapter 48, above mentioned; and section 16 of said acts of the Twenty-eight General Assembly legalizes all loans affected by the repeal of chapter 48, and permits a recovery of interest thereon at a rate not exceeding '8 per cent. The position of defendant is that by the curative act its original contract was validated, and that tire attempt to take away this benefit or right was within the inhibition of both the federal and state constitutions, as impairing the obligation of .contracts. On the other hand, it is insisted that the- obligation of a contract, which may not be impaired by retroactive legislation on the part of the states, is what is included in the law existing when the contract was made. Such prior law, it is said, enters into, and becomes a part of, the agreement, and this element of the contract is what is meant to be protected by the constitutional principle under consideration; that what was gratuitously added thereafter by the legislature may at any time be taken away.
We are not able to say with certainty whether the method of computing plaintiff’s credit is in issue here. The fact is that this case, with those of Briggs and Craig against this same defendant, decided at this' term, were submitted together. 114 Iowa, 232. The constitutional question we understand to be common to each, but further than this we cannot determine with assurance the issues. However, the question of accounting, if in the case, was the same as that presented on Brigg’s Appeal, and is ruled by what is there said. — Affirmed.