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59 Cal. 496

Rumpp v. Gerkens

California Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1881

California Supreme Court · decided 1881-10-15

Appeal by the plaintiff from a judgment for defendant M. Leonis, and from an order denying a new trial, in the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles. Howard, J. Action for the foreclosure of a mortgage made to the plaintiff by Jacob F. Gerkens and wife, of date July 18, 1876.

Relies on Carpentier v. Brenham

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1881-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 18 later decisions — most recently June 2005

18 state decisions

801881189019001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

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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Thornton, J.:

¶1We find no error in the record in this cause. The transactions between Leonis and the common mortgagors of plaintiff’s assignor and Leonis, did not extinguish the mortgage to the latter so that he could not use it as a protection to his rights against the subsequent mortgage to Rumpp, plaintiff’s assignor. In other words, a Court of equity will regard it as still existing as a lien, and not having merged, so as to protect him against the subsequent mortgage of the assignor of plaintiff.

¶2In law, a merger always takes place when a greater estate and a less coincide and meet in the same person in one and the same right, without any intermediate estate. The lesser estate is said to be annihilated or merged in the greater; but a Court of equity is not guided in this matter by the rules of law. It will sometimes hold a charge extinguished where it would continue to exist at law; and sometimes preserve it, when at law it would be merged. The question is one of intention, actual or presumed, of the person in whom the inter*502ests are united. (Forbes v. Moffatt, 18 Ves. 384; Carpentier v. Brenham, 40 Cal. 235; 1 Jones on Mort., c. 20, pt. 1, on " Merger and Subrogation,” §§ 848-850, etc.)

¶3The testimony shows that Leonis did not intend that his security should merge in the deed he took from the mortgagors, or that his lien should be extinguished. The plaintiff obtained all by the decree to which she was in equity entitled.

¶4Judgment-androrder-affirmed.

¶5Sharpstein and Myrick, JJ., concurred.

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