Mowry v. Crocker

Citations

• 33 S.C. 436
• 12 S.E. 3
• 1890 S.C. LEXIS 156

Syllabus

<p>1. A mortgage duly taken and recorded without any notice to the mortgagee of a prior unrecorded paper claimed to be a mortgage, has priority of lien over this unrecorded mortgage.</p> <p>2. A took an informal mortgage from a debtor which Avas never recorded; B, a subsequent creditor without notice of this older mortgage, took also an informal mortgage on the same land, and this mortgage was copied into the mortgage record book ; C, a subsequent creditor to both A and B, took a valid mortgage on the same land, which mortgage was at once and duly recorded. C had no notice of A’s mortgage and no actual notice of B’s mortgage, although his attorney had seen the copy of it in the record book. After this, A took another informal mortgage in lieu of the first one, alleged to be lost, but did not record it until he heard of B’s mortgage, more than 40 days after the date of his (A’s) last mortgage. Held, that A could not claim priority over O, by reason of his priority over B who had priority o\\'er C, for the reasons that B had no priority over 0, that A had actual notice of B's mortgage before A’s mortgage acquired, by its record after time, a lien at the date of its record, and that B and C being subsequent creditors without notice of A’s first lien, were entitled to priority from the date of their mortgages.</p> <p>3. Is a mortgagee affected with notice of an informal mortgage from having seen a copy of it on record ?</p> <p>4. In- an equity cause, costs are within the discretion of the Circuit Judge, and his discretion was not abused in this case.</p>