Logan v. Eva

Citations

• 144 Pa. 312

Syllabus

<p>1. In ejectment by the sheriff’s vendee of the legal title, against the person as whose property the land was sold, and the wife of the latter, the wife set up an equitable title in herself by a resulting trust. The only witnesses to prove the trust were the two defendants. Their testimony being sufficient, if believed, to establish the trust, it was properly submitted to the jury, although contradicted.</p> <p>2. It is well settled that a purchaser of land is unaffected by a secret trust or equity unknown to him, and that he may pass title, untrammeled by the trust, to a person who has notice of it. A mortgagee is regarded in the law as such a purchaser, and he is protected from all secret equities and trusts of which he had no notice.</p> <p>8. When a mortgagee of the legal title has taken the mortgage without notice of a resulting trust, a purchaser at a sheriff’s sale on the mortgage will be protected by the mortgagee’s want of notice, even though such purchaser was a surety on the bond secured by the mortgage, and cognizant at the time it was given of the facts raising the trust.</p> <p>4. If a purchaser without notice could pass his title only to persons ignorant of the trust, the market value of his property would be depreciated and his enjoyment of it impaired by the restriction. Hence, his vendee’s knowledge is not in the way of the transmission of the title unimpaired by the trust: Per Mr. Justice McCollum.</p>