10 Watts 434 | Pa. | 1840
The opinion of the court was delivered,by
The principle of Attwater v. Mathiot, 9 Serg. & Rawle 420, and M’Mullen v. Wenner, 16 Serg. & Rawle 20, is, that the equitable estate of the vendee, to the value of the paid purchase-money, or the legal estate of the vendor to the value of the •purchase-money, for which the title is retained as a security, may be bound by a judgment against the one or the other of them, and sold on it as a separate, independent, and distinct interest in the land; and that the purchaser takes it with the rights and responsibilities of him whom he succeeds. By these two cases, as well as by Catlin v. Robinson, 2 Watts 373,and Purviance v. Lemmon, 16 Serg. & Rawle 294, it is settled, that the interests of vendors and vendees are concurrent, but distinct estates, which may be separately sold, judicially or voluntarily, without disturbance of each other; and to unsettle a principle upheld by so many cases, would not only impair all confidence in the stability of the law, but derange the symmetry of our decisions. Like all others, judgments against the owner of an equitable estate in land, rank according to priority of date; and why should a judgment obtained by the holder of the legal title be, for that reason, entitled to a preference! He has another security which another creditor has not; and though I will not say that an equity would thence arise to throw him on it, yet it is a circumstance worthy of consideration, in an inquiry whether an older judgment creditor shall be deprived of his security on the ground of personal favour. By purchasing it at the sheriff’s sale, the vendor might merge the vendee’s equitable interest in the legal estate, and thus preclude-himself from further recourse to the property or per■son, as was determined in Chew v. Mathers, 1 Penn. Rep. 487; but that would not have merged an intermediate interest, or the price of it gained by a judgment creditor, and thus have given the vendor, not only his land again, but all the vendee had paid for it on the contract. The vendor, indeed, retains the title as a security for all that is unpaid; but that enables him not to make it bear on what the vendee has extricated from its hold by actual payment. There is no reason, therefore, why the vendor should give his judgment a preference over a prior lien on it, by tacking it to the ghost of his former ownership. Notwithstanding the opinion expressed by Mr Justice Duncan, in M’Call v. Lenox, 9 Serg. & Rawle 304, the creditor, in that case, was not allowed to tack his judgment on the bond to his earlier mortgage, and thus exclude the mortgagor’s intervening lease. No more was decided than that the sheriff’s ven
Decree reversed, and report of the auditor affirmed.