O'Conner v. WarnerO'Conner v. Warner
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
— It would puzzle those who controvert the principle of Savoy v. Jones, аnd the subsequent cases of that stamp, to give a reason for the faith that is in them beyond the apparent hardship of the case. The debt secured by the Act of 1806, was the debt of the building, -not of any owner of it; the lien was on the building; the process was against the building; and the building itself, not the builder’s interest in it, was directed to be sold. The debt was charged on it, as taxes are charged on unseated land, without regard to the ownership; and we are bound to say the building was sold, likе unseated land, without regard to the ownership. To do otherwise, would have required us to interpolate the very provision which has been recently, but inсautiously, interpolated by the legislature, and thus perform an act of judicial legislation not less abhorrent to the principles of the constitution, thаn an act of legislative adjudication. We could not say that the estate in expectancy was excluded from the lien by the spirit of the Act, or thаt it would have been protected had the case been foreseen. The avowed object was to protect the mechanic or mаterial man without regard to any one else; and that the reversioner or remainderman was intended to be put ón a footing with the tenant in possession, is еvident from the clause which authorized “ any person interested in the building” to call for a formal entry of satisfaction; for it would have been absurd to give him а right to expunge the evidence of the lien if he might not be affected by it. And this liability of separate interests to contribution towards a general burthen, though sometimes attended with hardship in practice, was just in its principle, inasmuch as it was calculated to produce the results which equity produces when it аpportions a general charge among owners of the separate parts of a fee in proportion to their relative value and the benefit received by each from the consideration of the encumbrance. Besides this, the injustice of allowing the claimant to follow his materials, or the products of his labour, into the hands of a reversioner or a remainderman, was no greater than the injustice of
Yet we are not compelled by the precеding considerations, to give it an operation entirely prospective. No one has purchased on the faith of a judicial exposition оf the Act of 1836, for it has received none. Purchasers have acted on their own interpretation of its meaning, and consequently on their own responsibility. They cannot complain of violated faith given to the accredited act of a constitutional organ; and till the judiciary has fixed the meaning оf a doubtful law, the legislature has a right to explain it. The Act of 1836 was susceptible of such explanation. It was not the law which had been before the courts; and the construction given to its predecessors, was not applicable to it with conclusive force. For that reason alone the judgment is sustained.
Judgment affirmed.