Carroll v. Hutton

Citations

• 88 Md. 676
• 41 A. 1081
• 1898 Md. LEXIS 229

Syllabus

<p>Mortgage Sales — Division of large Tract of Land — Insufficient Advertisement of Sale — Exceptions.</p> <p>A mortgage sale of a tract of land containing 1,800 acres was set aside when reported to the Court for ratification, and a re-sale was ordered to be made in separate farms so far as practicable, as well as in its entirety. The land had been worked in five separate farms and upon the whole tract there were is dwelling houses and many outbuildings. The trustee directed a surveyor to divide the property into five farms as formerly occupied. The advertisement of the sále described the property by name and stated that it would be first offered in five farms, a plat of which could be seen at the office of the mortgagee’s attorney, and in the event of the prices obtained for them not being sufficient to cover the mortgage indebtedness then the property would be sold as a whole. There was nothing in the advertisement to identify the several farms that were to be sold, or to show their exact outlines, and the improvements thereon, or the proportion of arable land in each, and no copies of a plat of the property were distributed at the sale. The plat was kept at an office in Baltimore City while the property sold was situated in Baltimore County. At the sale the mortgagee became the purchaser of the entire tract at a price the adequacy of which was disputed. Held, that the trustee should have made an examination of the property and caused a division thereof for sale to be made in the most advantageous manner, not necessarily according to the five farms; that the advertisement did not contain a sufficient description of the different tracts and that consequently the sale to the mortgagee should be set aside and a re-'sale made.</p>