US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

1. Where real estate bound by a judgment or a mortgage has been alienated in separate parcels to various persons at different times, such parcels should be subjected to the satisfaction of the lien in the inverse order of their alienation.

2. The English and the American authorities on the subject considered and reviewed.

On June 20, 1870, the firm of S. P. Brown & Son made to Samuel P. Brown its promissory note for $10,000, payable to his order one year thereafter, which he duly endorsed to the Freedman's Saving and Trust Company. To secure its payment, he executed to Daniel L. Eaton, the actuary of the company, a deed of trust for certain lots of ground in Mount Pleasant, in the District of Columbia. Default having been made in the payment of the note, the trustee sold the property Oct. 12, 1872, and conveyed it to the company.

On March 3, 1870, John M. Jolly obtained in the court below a judgment against Samuel P. Brown. At various times in 1873, the company, for a valuable consideration, sold and conveyed a portion of said lots to different purchasers, giving to each its bond to save him harmless against said judgment. It still holds the remaining lots.

Some time about December, 1870, the National Savings Bank of the District of Columbia loaned to said Brown, or to said firm, moneys, to secure the payment of which he executed deeds of trust upon a number of other lots in Mount Pleasant. The moneys remaining unpaid, the bank, to protect its security against said judgment, purchased the same from Jolly, and, in July, 1874, issued an execution thereon, and caused it to be levied on the lots embraced by the trust deed to Eaton.

This bill against the Savings Bank was filed by John A. J. Creswell, Robert Purvis, and Robert H. T. Leipold, the commissioners of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company. It alleges that said promissory note remains unpaid, except so chanrobles.com-redchanrobles.com-red

Page 100 U. S. 631

far as it has been reduced by the application of the proceeds of the lots so sold by the company, and that the latter is willing to pay its pro rata share to relieve from the lien of said judgment them and the remaining lots conveyed by Eaton, if it is in law or in equity bound so to contribute. It prays for an injunction restraining the Savings Bank and the marshal for said district, who was made a defendant, from selling said lots under said execution, and for general relief. By an amended bill, the purchasers from the company were made defendants. The National Savings Bank set up among other things in its answer that Brown, at the time of the rendition of said judgment, owned a considerable amount of property subject to the lien of said judgment other than that described in the complainants' bill, which property having been conveyed by him subsequently to his conveyances in trust to secure his debt to the defendant, the purchasers thereof are necessary parties in order to charge them with a pro rata share of said judgment.

The remaining facts are stated in the opinion of the Court.

The special term decreed that the complaints were entitled to have all the real estate belonging to said Samuel P. Brown on the twentieth day of June, 1870, bound by the judgment at law in favor of John M. Jolly, sold in the inverse order of its alienation by said Brown, including that conveyed by him for the security of the National Savings Bank, before the lands conveyed for the security of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company can be called upon to contribute to the payment of any part of said judgment. The defendants were also enjoined from in any wise interfering with any of said property for the purpose of collecting or satisfying the said judgment, or any part of it, until all the other real estate belonging to said Brown on said twentieth day of June, bound by said judgment, shall have been sold, and the proceeds applied to the payment thereof.

That decree having been affirmed by the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia at its general term, the National Savings Bank appealed to this court. chanrobles.com-redchanrobles.com-red

Page 100 U. S. 638