New Orleans Natational Banking Association v. Adams

by William Burnham Woods

United States Supreme Court

109 U.S. 211

New Orleans National Banking Association  v.  Adams

'It is understood, as above stated, that the parties hereto do not by these presents impair, affect, or novate their existing claims, and that in case of non-payment they will be entitled to enforce the judgments which may be held by them; and furthermore, that the original mortgages and privileges remain in full force and effect, and are not hereby novated, and if need be, for the purpose of avoiding all doubts, the said privileges and mortgages are hereby recognized as operating on the said property in the proportions aforesaid, and to secure the debts stated as aforesaid with the rank above stated.'

This agreement was duly recorded in the office of the recorder of mortgages for the parish of La Fourche, on September 12, 1867.

After the making of this agreement, Cummings, without having paid the sums the payment of which was promised, thereby sold the property to a Mrs. Tucker, who conveyed an undivided half interest to one Thomas J. Daunis, and Mrs. Tucker and Daunis then executed a mortgage on the same to John I. Adams & Co., to secure certain notes made by Daunis to said firm, after which Mrs. Tucker conveyed her undivided half of the property to Daunis. Subsequently the Bank of New Orleans, now become the New Orleans National Banking Association, assuming that the agreement entered into by Cummings before Gourdain, the notary, on September 7, 1867, constituted a mortgage by which the balance found thereby to be due it from Cummings was secured, filed the bill in this case to foreclose the same. The bill made the firm of John I. Adams & Co. parties defendant, charging that said firm claimed to have a mortgage on the property covered by the alleged mortgage of the complainant, and that if said firm had any lien upon or interest in said premises it was subsequent to September 12, 1867, the date of the inscription of the complainant's alleged mortgage.

To this bill John I. Adams & Co. filed a plea and answer, in which they set up that they, being holders of certain notes secured by a mortgage on the property described in the bill of complaint, instituted a certain suit upon the same against Thomas J. Daunis, in the district court sitting for the parish of La Fourche, and obtained a writ of seizure and sale against said property, under and by virtue of which the same was seized by the sheriff, and in October, 1875, sold to John I. Adams, who claimed title thereto. They further alleged that the agreement dated September 7, 1867, set forth in the complainant's bill, being the agreement of Cummings with the Bank of New Orleans and other holders of liens upon the plantation sold to him, was not a mortgage, and if it were, it was proscribed, because it had not been reinscribed within 10 years from the date of the original inscription, on September 12, 1867, as required by the law of Louisiana.

Upon final hearing upon the pleadings and evidence, the circuit court dismissed the bill, and from its decree the complainant appealed.

J. D. Rouse, Wm. Grant, and Thos. L. Bayne, for appellant.

Jos. P. Hornor and W. S. Benedict, for appellees.

Woods, J.

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