Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

2 Johns. Ch. 138

Ferguson v. Smith

New York Court of Chancery

Decided April 23, 1816

New York Court of Chancery · decided 1816-04-23

MOTION by Garr, for the defendant Juliana Smith, to set aside a decretal order for the sale of mortgaged premises, and under which a sale had been made, but no conveyance executed.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1816-04-23

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently May 1909

4 state decisions

101816182018301840185018601870188018901900decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

The Chancellor.

¶1The general rule is, that the service of a subpoena against husband and wife on the husband alone, is a good service on both, and the reason is, that the husband and wife are one person in law, and the husband is bound to answer for both. ( Wyatt’s Pr. Reg. 402, 403. Gilbert’s For. Rom. 41, 42. 1 Harris. Ch. Practice, 207.) But where the plaintiff is seeking relief out of the separate estate of the wife, it has been deemed necessary, in a late case, (9 Vesey, *140488.) that the wife should be served. Here *the right of redemption is exclusively in the wife, and her husband has absconded; she asks only for an opportunity to redeem, and I think it ought to be granted. If she had alleged any defence, I should have been also inclined to have granted her leave to put in a separate answer, but she admits the demand, and only asks for leave to redeem the mortgage.

¶2The motion is granted, on her bringing into Court, in four weeks, the debt and interest, together with the costs accrued prior to the decretal order of sale.

¶3Motion granted.

/2/johnsch/138 · .json · Public domain