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32 Mo. 262

Matlack v. Lare

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided March 15, 1862

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1862-03-15

Louis Law Commissioner’s Court. Plaintiffs commenced suit in the Law Commissioner’s Court, March 17,1859, upon a mechanic’s lien, filed in the office of the clerk of the St. Louis Land Court, March 14, 1859, for the sum of one hundred and fifty-seven dollars and sixty cents.

Relies on Patrick v. Abeles · Hempler v. Schneider · Denny v. Eckelkamp

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1862-03-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently February 1970

1 federal appellate · 11 state decisions

30186218701880189019001910192019301940195019601970decided

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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Bay, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2In Hempler v. Schneider, 17 Mo. 258, and Denny v. Eckelkamp, 30 Mo. 140, this court held that a party might give jurisdiction to an inferior court by a voluntary renunciation of a part of his demand. This cause, however, must be remanded, for the reason that there was no lien to enforce. To entitle the plaintiffs to a lien it was necessary for them to file with the clerk of the St. Louis Land Court a just and true account of their demand, which they seek to make a lien upon the buildings and a true description of the property, or so near as to identify the same, upon which the lien is intended to apply. In this case the account filed contains no such description of the property as would enable any person to identify it. It describes it as two three-story brick houses on the east side of Fifth street, between Franklin avenue and Morgan street. No boundary is given, nor is the number of the lot designated, nor does it even state that the property is in the city of St. Louis. To enforce a judgment upon a mechanic’s lien, the law requires that the execution shall be a special fieri facias — such an execution issued upon this judgment would fail to disclose to the officer the property to be sold. He certainly could not identify the property by the description in the fieri facias. The defect is fatal as to any lien; but according to the decision in Patrick v. Abeles, 27 Mo. 184, the plaintiff may take a general *265judgment, and to enable them to do so we shall remand the cause.

¶3Judgment reversed and cause remanded,

the other judges concurring.
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