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10 Ind. 102

Hill v. Brinkley

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided May 24, 1858

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1858-05-24

<p>The Court, on motion, will set off judgments of the same or of different Courts.</p> <p>Where one of the judgments thus set off has been assigned, the Court will not except the amount of a lien thereon of which the assignee had no notice.</p> <p>In this state, attorneys haye no general lien on judgments for fees.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1858-05-24

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently July 1909

11 state decisions

50185818601870188018901900decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Perkins, J.

¶1Motion to set off judgments. Motion sustained.

¶2It appears that David Hill obtained a judgment against Spencer Brinkley. Subsequently, Brinkley became the owner, by assignment to him from one Jones, of a judgment in the same Court, against Hill. Brinkley moved that the Court order the latter judgment to be set off against the former, and the former to be entered as thereby satisfied. The Court did so. This was right. The Court will thus set off judgments in the same, and in different Courts. 2 Swan’s Pr. p. 999.

¶3While the motion was pending, the attorneys for Jones gave notice that they claimed a lien of 50 dollars, on the judgment assigned to Brinkley, by him, and asked the Court to except that amount out of the operation of the order of set-off. The Court did so. This was wrong.

¶41. It was wrong because Brinkley had purchased and received the assignment of the whole judgment without any notice, given expressly, or constructively by noting the claim for a lien upon the record.

¶52. Because, in this state, attorneys have no general lien upon judgments for fees. In England, and in some of the states of the Union, attorneys have such a lien for taxable costs; but these are different from attorneys’ fees. These taxable costs, here, go to the clerks and other officers, not to attorneys. Neither statute nor usage, in this state, gives attorneys a lien upon judgments for their fees.

¶6But no error is assigned as to this point.

¶7Per Curiam. — The judgment is affirmed with costs.

I. Van Devanter and J. F. McDowell, for the appellant.J. Brownlee, A. Steele and H. D. Thompson, for the appellee.
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