Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

25 Ill. 277

Hall v. Lance

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided January 15, 1861

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 1861-01-15

This was an ejectment commenced in the Fulton Circuit Court by the plaintiffs in error against the defendant, John Lance, for south-west seventeen, six north, one east, fourth P. M. The declaration was filed, the rule to plead entered, and the general issue pleaded by Lance at the June term, 1859.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1861-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 16 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently April 1990

13 state decisions

4018611870188018901900191019201930194019501960197019801990decided

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 →

Caton, C. J.

¶1A mortgage, even after condition broken, is not an absolute outstanding title of which a stranger can take advantage, and defeat a recovery in ejectment by the mortgagor or one claiming under him. It is available for the mortgagee or his tenant, but not for the tenant of the mortgagor. It may be that the defendant might have shown that he had attorned to the mortgagee, of the condition broken, and thus defended his possession under the mortgage; but of this the record affords no proof. The defense then must rest entirely on the judgment of foreclosure.

¶2Whether that judgment would constitute a defense must depend entirely on the fact whether the record of the mortgage on which the judgment was rendered, was older than the judgment under which the plaintiff claimed title. This the record fails to disclose. There is nothing to show that the scire facias was brought on the record of the mortgage produced on trial. For aught that appeared, the foreclosure may have been of a junior mortgage, subsequent to the judgment under which the plaintiff claimed. The judgment, then, of foreclosure on the scire facias was not sufficient to constitute a defense to the plaintiff’s title.

¶3The judgment of the court below must be reversed, and the cause remanded.

¶4Judgment reversed.

/25/ill/277 · .json · Public domain