Reynolds v. Rees

Citations

• 23 S.C. 438
• 1885 S.C. LEXIS 120

Syllabus

<p>1. Findings of fact by the Circuit Judge in a case of chancery approved.</p> <p>2. In action by executrix, an attorney is not incompetent under section 400 of the code to testify to communications between himself, as attorney for the testator, and the administrator, now deceased, of an estate under which defendants claim.</p> <p>3. Entries on the docket and the common pleas journal, and the testimony of attorneys engaged, are competent evidence to establish the existence and contents of a judgment record which was proved to be lost. This case distinguished from Brown v. Coney, 12 S. C., 144.</p> <p>4. A party who in good faith advanced money to an administrator for the use of the estate, and received as security the pledge of a bond and mortgage held by the administrator, has the right to a foreclosure of such mortgage.</p> <p>5. But the assignee having afterwards put this bond in the hands of this administrator, who was also an attorney, for collection, and who in his own name sued the bond to judgment, and the mortgagor, without notice of the assignment, having settled the judgment by. a surrender of the mortgaged land, which thereupon passed into the possession of the heirs of the estate represented by this administrator, the lands remained liable for the payment of the mortgage debt, even though the mortgagor be relieved of further liability.</p> <p>6. The bond should be credited with any payments made by the obligor, but not with payments made by the administrator upon the debt for which the assignment of this bond was collateral; the bond stood as security for the balance due on the debt thus secured.</p>