Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/482

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454 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. tained the amount due libellant, and ordered it paid out of the attached property, and costs too.-^ All these advantages and means resulting from attachments are by statute available in an equity suit. Sometimes they will suffice for full relief, as in our Brunswick case, and relief of an equitable nature, viz. price, not damages. Of course in Spurr v. Scoville they would not, but it will never do to say that our vendor attach- ing the Vendome has not a lis in which something can be done, nor to say there is no jurisdiction. Clearly there is a qualified jurisdiction explained in Boyd v. Urquhart and in Eliot v. McCor- mick,^ and the citizen has the right to have it exerted if and when it will avail him. If he were suing on a bond as above, all the pre- liminaries, "equity hearing" and all, will be determined by the tribunal before ordering execution. If his suit is in equity against the Englishman vendee, all the steps — style of deed, approval, order that the clerk hold it for defendant's use, etc. — should be passed upon by the court's decree, as in ordinary suits against a cash vendee. Nothing is required or compelled from the activity of the foreigner, and finally execution for the contract price is ordered and exact relief attained. Here the attachment jurisdiction is not futile and irrelevant, as in Spurr v. Scoville, but real and complete. Is not this programme sound in principle? T. M. Stetso7i. 1 Sprague's Dec. 423. 2 j^^ Mass. 10. Note. — A glance forward indicates that the above doctrine may perhaps have wider application than to sales for cash. Most sales of realty contemplate a return mort- gage of it, and it may be thought difficult to compel a foreigner (without personal service) to execute such mortgage. But the deed poll of the above article is to con- form to the contract of sale. Properly drafted, it can create in favor of the grantor a lien for the purchase money exactly identical with a mortgagee's lien or title. In fact, such is a favorable method in several States for creating the desired status, viz. convert- ing grantor into a mortgagee, and grantee into a mortgagor. The lien thus reserved to grantor is declared by Mr. Justice Bradley to " equal a mortgage taken contemporane- ously with the deed, and nothing more, and the purchaser has the equity of redemption precisely as if he had received a deed and given a mortgage for the purchase money." King V. Y. M. A., i Woods, 386. The name of the topic in the books relating to this mode is " Vendor's Lien by Contract or Reservation." See Jones on Mortgages, sec. 229-240, Ogden V. Ogden, 4 Ohio St. 182, and the situation " differs in no respect from a technical mortgage." The formal variation from the mortgage signed by vendee to such deed poll is justified by defendant's breach of contract, and is in no sense material in equity. It is formal only, and changes even of substance are often justified in cases of specific performance where the doctrine of cy pres prevails, as well as in charity cases. (See many cases in Fry, S. P., sec. 667-674.) Such deed poll is an equitable equivalent for the deed and mortgage, just as in a contract of sale, where vendee is to give back a lease for one year, the deed poll may reserve the one year use.