<p>Mechanics’ lien — Notice—Verification,</p> <p>Failure to verify a notice of lien filed under section 8 of Act No. 270, Laws of 1887, is fatal to proceedings thereafter had for its enforcement.</p>
Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know
Reversed · Decided 1889-04-24
How this case has been cited
Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently March 1922
2 federal appellate · 5 state decisions
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.
¶1Plaintiffs brought proceedings under the statute of 188^ to establish a lien on certain property for the value of lumber claimed to have been sold to *713Nnickrhem and put into a building on tne premises. The case presents a number of serious errors, but, as there is a fatal defect underlying the whole action, we meed refer to no more.
¶2The notice of lien filed with the register has no verification of any kind. The statute positively requires the notice to be verified, amd it cannot be held directory.1 When a person can create a cloud on title by ex parte action, he must at least comply with every statutory condition, and the verification was designed to secure good faith in the attempt to set up a lien, and to prevent such notices from being filed without being protected against malicious and uhfounded assertion. Such a lien, when once filed, must have the effect of preventing the property from sale or other use until the validity of it is determined, and it might be made a means of serious mischief, unless carefully guarded. As there was no valid notice of lien filed, there was nothing to authorize this action.
¶3The judgment must be reversed, with costs of both courts, as there is no basis for a new trial
