Elizabethport Cordage Co. v. Whitlock

Citations

• 37 Fla. 190

Syllabus

<p>SURROGATION, WHEN ALLOWED, OF JUNIOR MORTGAGEES TO PRIOR RIGHTS OF OLDER CANCELLED MORTGAGE THAT SECURED SAME INDEBTEDNESS—EJECTMENT JUDGMENT AS AN ADJUDICATION OF TITLE—LIS PENDENS—JUDGMENTS AIDED AND EXPLAINED BY ENTIRE RECORD.</p> <p>1. Where a mortgage, prior in date and lien to all other claims against the property it covers, is purchased from the mortgagees for a good and valuable consideration, and the purchasers thereof, instead of taking an assignment or transfer thereof to themselves, procure it to be absolutely and unconditionally cancelled and'satisfied of record by the mortgagees, and several years subsequent to the date of such cancelled mortgage, take a new mortgage to themselves on the same property to secure the same indebtedness that had been secured by the old cancelled mortgage: Held, That as against innocent third persons, without notice, who have in good faith been induced to change their positions, by purchasing the property for a valuable consideration, in reliance upon what the record speaks as to the cancellation of such older mortgage, such purchasers of the older cancelled mortgage have no right to be subrogated to the priorities thereof, or to have its cancellation of record vacated or, ignored.</p> <p>2. The law of ejectment in Florida in force up to and until the enactment on February 22d, 1881, of Chapter 3244, did not require the verdicts or judgments in such suits to state either the qual* ity or quantity of the plaintiff’s estate in the lands recovered, nor to give any description of the land recovered.</p> <p>3. Under the provisions of section 2, p. 481 McClellan’s Digest, the interposition of a plea of “not guilty” by the defendant in an ejectment suit was expressly declared to have the effect in such cases of putting in issue the title to the land in controversy. Where, prior to the enactment on February 22d, 1881, of said Chapter 8244, an action of ejectment was brought against a tenant in possession holding under a lease fr