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77 Me. 433

Bragdon v. Hatch

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided August 6, 1885

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1885-08-06

On report. Forcible entry and detainer commenced in the municipal court of Biddeford and brought to this court on the pleadings. The plaintiff claims title from a mortgage by Alice E. Hatch to William G. Getchell, dated February 6, 1879, which Getchell proceeded to foreclose March 1, 1882. The mortgage contained the one year foreclosure clause. April 16, 1883, Getchell conveyed the premises by warranty deed to the plaintiff.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1885-08-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently April 1963

4 state decisions

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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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Walton, J.

¶1A mortgagee’s title will not support a complaint for forcible entry and detainer against the mortgagor, or those *434claiming under him, unless the mortgage has been foreclosed. Jewett v. Mitchell, 72 Maine, 28, and cases there cited.

¶2The evidence of foreclosure in this case is not sufficient. The only evidence of the facts necessary to constitute a foreclosure, is a certificate of the mortgagee. He certifies that he published a notice of foreclosure in the Sanford Weekly News, published weekly in Sanford, in said county ; but he does not say that the Weekly News was printed in Sanford, or within the county. In Blake v. Dennett, 49 Maine, 102, such a certificate was held to be defective ; for the statute requires the notice to be published in a newspaper printed in the county; and a newspaper may be published in a county, and yet not be printed there ; and when the foreclosure of a mortgage is claimed, a strict compliance with the provisions of the statute must be shown.

¶3Besides, we do not think a certificate of the mortgagee is competent evidence. The act of 1849, c. 105, (B. S., c. 90, § 5, clause 2,) makes the certificate of the register of deeds prima facie evidence of the publication of a notice of foreclosure ; but there is no statute or rule of evidence that makes the certificate of the mortgagee evidence of the fact; and we think it is not competent evidence.

¶4Judgment for defendants.

Virgin, Libbey, Emery and Haskell, JJ., concurred.Peters, C. J., concurred in the result.
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