Collins v. Phillips

Citations

• 236 Pa. 386
• 84 A. 854
• 1912 Pa. LEXIS 763

Syllabus

<p>Judgment — Judgment by confession — Revival of judgment— Waiver of inquisition — Notice to heirs of defendant — Irregularity —Remedy—Act of 1705.</p> <p>1. Where a judgment is entered on a warrant of attorney containing a waiver of inquisition and one year thereafter the defendant dies, and subsequently an exemplification of the judgment containing no suggestion of the defendant’s death is entered in another county, where the defendant owned land, but in which he did not reside and where no other creditor asserts a claim, and thereafter the judgment is revived by scire facias with constructive notice to the defendant’s heirs, although without any substitution if his personal representatives, such proceedings, while irregular, are not void, and the defendant’s heirs cannot thirty-two years after the defendant died and ten years after the land had been sold by the sheriff under the judgment, maintain an action of ejectment against the sheriff’s vendees for the land in question.</p> <p>2. In such a case the judgment bound the land and the heirs at law upon whom the title devolved, were the only parties in interest at the time of the revival to be affected with notice. Under these circumstances there was no purpose to serve by raising up personal representatives of the defendant with no duty to perform, and no creditors to protect, simply to be affected with notice in order to give validity to the judgment of revival. Such a case is covered by the act of 1705, 1 Sm. Laws 57, which provides that where lands have been sold by the sheriff upon an irregular judgment, the land shall not be restored to the person against whom the judgment was entered, but restitution only shall be made of the price for which such lands were sold.</p> <p>3. Irregularity of selling land without an inquisition must be objected to within a reasonable time, and such reasonable time is before the confirmation of the sale and the acknowledgment of the deed.</p>