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126 Mass. 141

Porter v. Kingman

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided January 4, 1879

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1879-01-04

Bill in equity, filed July 17,1878, alleging that on July lb, 1871, Lewis Porter and George Southworth executed and délivered to the North Bridgewater Savings Bank their promissory note for $7,445.56, secured by a mortgage of land in Brockton; that in 1875 Porter and Southworth were adjudged bankrupts, and in the same year their assignees conveyed the land to a third person, who conveyed it to the plaintiff; that the mortgage to the bank was given without consideration and…

Relies on Wiswall v. Sampson · Hills v. Parker · Columbian Book Co. v. De Golyer

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1879-01-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently April 1945

1 federal appellate · 11 state decisions

5018791880189019001910192019301940decided

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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Soule, J.

¶1If we assume that the allegations of the bill make *142a case for relief in equity, the question remains whether the plaintiff can maintain this bill, or must pursue her remedy by petition in the suit in which the defendants were appointed receivers of the property of the corporation, which is named as payee of the note and grantee in the mortgage. On the face of the papers, the corporation had a legal title to both instruments, and it was the duty of the defendants, under the order appointing them, to take possession of both. If the plaintiff has any equitable ground for insisting that the mortgage ought not to be enforced against her title to the land, such right must be made known to the court by a petition in the cause in which the defendants were appointed receivers. The property is in the custody of the court, and the defendants in holding it are officers of the court. Equitable rights which it is contended are superior to the title made by order of the court can be passed upon only in the cause in which that title is created, and cannot be set up in an independent suit. Atlas Bank v. Nahant Bank, 23 Pick. 480. Columbian Book Co. v. De Golyer, 115 Mass. 67. Wiswall v. Sampson, 14 How. 52. Noe v. Gibson, 7 Paige, 513. Robinson v. Atlantic & Great Western Railway, 66 Penn. St. 160. Russell v. East Anglian Railway, 3 Macn. & Gord. 104. 2 Dan. Ch. Pract. 1743. This well settled doctrine is entirely consistent with the decision in Hills v. Parker, 111 Mass. 508, and was recognized by the court in the opinion; but the plaintiff was permitted to maintain his action of replevin against the receivers of the Boston, Hartford and Erie Railroad Company, because the chattels in controversy had never been the property of that corporation, and therefore were not in their hands as receivers, and not in the custody of the court.

¶2The demurrer is for this reason well taken; and the bill must be dismissed.

¶3We express no opinion on the other question presented by the demurrer, the question whether the bill shows any equitable right in the purchaser of an equity of redemption from an assignee in bankruptcy to have a mortgage cancelled as having been obtained by fraud from the bankrupt. It will be time enough to pass upon that question when it is properly before us.

¶4Bill dismissed, without prejudice

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