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22 Kan. 619

Shaffer v. Pickrell

Supreme Court of Kansas

Decided July 15, 1879

Supreme Court of Kansas · decided 1879-07-15

Error from Franklin District Court. Replevin brought by Shaffer & Becker, partners, as plaintiffs, to recover the possession of. certain stock-hogs. The plaintiffs claimed they were the special owners of two hundred and fifty hogs, by virtue of a certain chattel mortgage executed to them by one D. B. Mott, on October 15th, 1877, and that the hogs sued for were included in said mortgage.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““A fair construction of these provisions is that the hogs, at the execution ol 1lio chattel mortgage, were owned by D. B. Mott, the mortgagor; that they were then in Franklin county, in this state, and were also in the possession of said Mott, in said county. * * * The suggestion that Mott may have had 500 or 5,000 hogs of the same description in Franklin county, from aught that, appears in the mortgage or in the record, is without particular force, as the canon of construction is to solve the doubts, if any exist, in favor, rather than against, tins validity of a written instrument; and we have no right to imagine facts to exist in the record to invalidate and destroy the chattel mortgage.””

quoted by 1 later decision, including Alferitz v. Ingalls

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1879-07-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently June 1915

2 state decisions

1018791880189019001910decided

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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¶1*623The opinion of the court was delivered by

Horton, C. J.:

¶2We think the description in the chattel mortgage of the property claimed by the plaintiffs in error sufficient, within the rule laid down in Brown v. Holmes, 13 Kas. 482. The description is: “ Two hundred and fifty stock-hogs, owned by the said D. B. Mott, in Franklin county, Kansas.” . . . “And,” the mortgage proceeds, “until default be made as aforesaid, or until such time as the said parties of the second part shall deem themselves insecure as aforesaid, the said party of the first part to continue in the peaceable possession of all the said goods and chattels, all which, in consideration thereof, he engages shall' be kept in as good condition as the same now are, and taken care of at his proper cost and expense.” A fair construction of these provisions is, that the hogs at the execution of the chattel mortgage were owned by D. B. Mott, the mortgagor; that they were then in Franklin county, in this state, and were also in the possession of said Mott, in said county. The case of the Savings Bank v. Sargent, 20 Kas. 576, is unlike this. In that case, the chattel mortgage did not name the county and state where the property was located. The suggestion that Mott may have had 500 or 5,000 hogs of the same description in Franklin county, from aught that appears in the mortgage or in the record, is without particular force, as the canon of construction is to solve the doubts, if any exist, in favor rather than against the validity of a written instrument, and we have no right to imagine facts to exist in the record to invalidate and destroy the chattel mortgage.

¶3The judgment of the district .court must therefore be reversed, and the case remanded with direction to the court below to enter judgment for the plaintiffs in error, and the proceeds of the sale, less the costs of $110, to wit, the sum of $150.25, will be applied to the payment of the balance due Shaffer & Becker, as far as it may go.

All the Justices concurring.
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