Excelsior Saving Fund v. Cochran

Citations

• 220 Pa. 634
• 70 A. 432
• 1908 Pa. LEXIS 830

Syllabus

<p>Mortgage — Service on owner — Defenses of owner — Scope of the Act of July 9,1901, P. L. 614, amended by the Act of April 23,1903, P. L. 261— Title to real estate.</p> <p>The Act of July 9, 1901, P. L. 614, is without reference to the jurisdiction of the 'courts, and is a regulation of service only.</p> <p>The Act of July 9, 1901, P. L. 614, amended by the Act of April 23, 1903, P. L. 261, does not so widen the scope of the statutory proceedings by a scire facias for the enforcement of a mortgage debt that it may now be applie.d to determine questions of title to real estate. The proceeding remains just what it was before the act of 1901, a remedy for the collection of a debt; the judgment which follows, is not and cannot be made a lien upon any land not owned by the mortgagor. The reason which prevailed, before the act was passed, to give the terretenant the right to intervene and denied it to the owner, obtains as much now as then, notwithstanding both are made parties — the one may be prejudiced by the verdict, the other cannot.</p> <p>On the trial of a scire facias sur mortgage where the case proceeds against the owner alone, the latter will not be permitted to prove title in himself to the premises described in the mortgage superior to, and wholly independent of, any that could be asserted for the mortgagor, and that in point of, fact the mortgagor was without any interest in the land that could be made the subject of lien.</p>