6 Mo. 558 | Mo. | 1840
Opinion of the Court by
Buckley and Randolph brought their action in the circuit court of St. Louis county against the steam boat Gen. Brady, and there had judgment. From that judgment the boat appeals.
The bill of exceptions shows this agreed case: that on the 3d day of July, 1837, Buckley and Randolph duly caused the said steam boat to be seized and levied on, so far as that could be done, under the state of the case, under the act of bth March, 1835, and the act of 12th February, 1839, supplementary thereto. Said boat then being in the hands of ■the constable, upon the demand in the complaint of Buckley
Two points are to be decided to ascertain the merits of this cause;
1st, Was the money claimed as the price of the coffee, a debt within the provisions of these two acts?
2d, Does the priority of the levy, or the priority of time at which the demand accrued, entitle the claimants to a preference in having their claim satisfied?
1st. Boats cannot be expected to take with them all the stores and supplies necessary for so long a voyage as that
To construe this law in any other way than to give the preference to those who first commenced their suit, would be to render the law a nullity. It would he worse than nothing. It would give the owners an opportunity of collusion with those who held the elder demands, to deter those whose demands were of later date from suing. Laws ought, to be so construed as to advance the remedy instead of construing them so as to defeat it. To suppose that the legislature intended to compel by this indirect method each person having a claim on a bo.at to wait till all those who had claims of an older date should sue, is to suppose, as it seems to me, a strange thing, an impossibility, unless the same law had made it the duty of these older claimants, under pain of forfeiture, to register their claims with some officer. Such an absurdity cannot be supposed. The law was intended .then to subject this boat to be sold for the benefit of the