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Court of Common Pleas,

BLAIR COUNTY.

said decree. This objection might be obviated, however, by now granting said heirs a full hearing. But the question as to the right of this court to make the order in question is more

EXCELSIOR BUILDING & LOAN ASSOCIA- | difficult of solution. Counsel for the association

TION v. REED.

Mortgage-Satisfaction-Record.

The Court of Common Pleas has no power to direct the recorder of deeds to enter on the record a decree striking off the satisfaction of a mortgage where the proceedings to obtain such decree are by rule to show cause why such decree shall not be entered.

Rule to rescind and vacate decree, made February 29, 1899, directing the recorder of deeds of Blair county to strike off satisfaction of a mortgage.

For rule, W. I. Woodcock.

Contra, W. H. Cover and Hinshing & Madden. Opinion by BELL, P. J. Filed July 3, 1899. The Excelsior Building and Loan Association, in 1891, took a mortgage, recorded in the office of the recorder of deeds of Blair county, in vol. 34, p. 6, from Mrs. Reed. In 1893 said association satisfied said mortgage and Mrs. Reed executed a new one, recorded in vol. 69, p. 78. On February 29, 1899, said association presented a petition to this court alleging that the said first mortgage, so taken in 1891, was satisfied through a mistake, whereupon this court made an order "that said satisfaction be stricken off and that said mortgage may continue to be a lien, and that the recorder of deeds be authorized and directed to enter a minute of this decree upon the mortgage recorded in vol. 34, page 6."

My recollection is that at the time said decree was made I intimated to counsel for the building and loan association doubts as to the power of the court to make such an order, but on being assured by said counsel that no one was in the least interested, except Mrs. Reed, who joined in the petition, I signed the decree in question.

But it now appears that some one else was interested. The heirs of Samuel M. Woodcock, Esq., deceased, held a mortgage intervening between said two building and loan association mortgages. When the association satisfied their first mortgage the Woodcock mortgage obtained priority. Said Woodcock heirs now ask that said herein before recited order of February 29, 1899, be rescinded and vacated, first, because made without notice to them; second, because this court had no power to make such an order. Of course, the Woodcock heirs were entitled to notice before their rights could be affected by

cite no precedents for such an order, nor can I find any instance where any court in summary proceedings, such as the petition presented February 29, 1899, has attempted to make such decree.

This court has general supervision over all records in the prothonotary's office, but I can find no legislation giving it such supervision over the books of the recorder of deeds. His office is an independent one so far as this court is concerned. True, he is a public officer, but no Act of Assembly gives this court summary control over his records and actions. Had the general superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in his office in Altoona, some contract entered into by mistake, it would not be pretended that this court could summarily direct the cancellation of said contract. And if the court inadvertently made such a summary order, how could we enforce it, if the said general superintendent chose to treat it as a nullity? And in this sense the general superintendent of a railroad and the recorder of deeds seem to stand on the same plane. The method to be used to correct papers on file in the office of either of said officials is not by summary order such as we would issue to the prothonotary, who is the clerk and servant of the court, but by bill in equity. In such equitable proceeding the court acquires jurisdiction by reason of the service of the bill, and the matter can be proceeded in regularly and legally, but I can find no warrant of law for the summary decree made as herein before recited on February 29, 1899. Such decree was illegal and void and must be vacated and rescinded.

In the answer filed to the rule to vacate decree the association avers that great injustice may be done them by such vacation of said decree, because on the faith of its validity they have satisfied their second mortgage. This, however, is no reason why this court should not correct a palpable error into which we were led by counsel for said association. But I think there is no warrant or real cause, for the fear of loss expressed in said answer. The present state of the record in the office of the recorder of deeds ought to be sufficient to put a grantee, or mortgagee on inquiry. But, be this as it may, the association can avail themselves of the protection of lis pendens by promptly bringing a bill in equity to correct the alleged mistakes. In such equitable proceeding this

in its vending or transportation, are a great good to mankind, and in them-legally conducted-there is naught of evil to our race.

court can legally adjust the rights of the respec- methods of manufacture, sale, or distribution, tive parties. Nothing is now decided except the cheapening of the making of the articles that this court had no legal power to make the produced, the improvement in the style or conherein before recited summary decree of Febru-venience of the finished product, the economy ary 29, 1899. And the decision now arrived at is without prejudice to the right of the association hereafter to contend that the Woodcock heirs have no standing to contest the association's request to have the satisfaction of the mortgage stricken off, and that in justice and equity the Woodcock heirs are not injured by striking off said satisfaction.

Now, July 3, 1899, rule absolute.

TRUSTS.

In his address as acting president in the absence of President Choate, Ambassador of the United States at the Court of St. James, Senator Manderson made the following observations with reference to trusts-that subject which is at present occupying so large a part of the public attention:

"The problems, legal and political, that are the most absorbingly important and likely to lead to far-reaching result in lawmaking and statute construction are those incident to socalled trusts, pools and combinations in manufacture, commerce and trade. The legislative difficulty seems to be to draw the line that should divide the objectionable trust or monopoly that defies the natural laws of trade, from the desirable corporation or the concentration of capital productive of good results.

"To strike down the one and not cripple the other is no easy task for the lawmaker. Concentration is the order of the day. Industries of importance and enterprises of magnitude can only be carried on with success by bringing together that aggregation of capital and limitation of personal liability permissible in the creation called a corporation.

"This artificial person has accomplished, in the gathering of the raw materials from the storehouse of nature; the making from them in the shop, mill and factory, articles of use or ornament; the gathering of them in mart, store and warehouse, to vend to the consumer, and the distribution of them by the numerous channels of water and land-more of substantial advantage to mankind than any other instrumentality.

"The century now closing has seen during its hundred years an advance on all lines of production, with corresponding benefit to the consumer, such as has been afforded at no other period in the world's history. Corporations that have for their purpose a bettering of

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"No more disastrous calamity could befall this republic, that largely by such concentration of capital, with the safeguards thrown about the investment, has kept for itself its own splendid market and is now capturing the markets of the world, than a blow administered, either by statutes or decision, destructive of those corporate interests that are honestly capitalized, fairly based and legitimately managed.

"Viewing the work of the lawmakers and the courts one cannot but feel some alarm at the drift of both, while realizing that the action of many of the corporate creatures made by the law is such as to demand as to them that a halt should be called and their aggressive advances cease, even if their destruction must be ordained to stop them in their career.

"The fear is that we may go to extremes and that in wiping out the iniquitous trusts we may destroy the legitimate corporations.

"That evils exist that need legislative correction cannot be gainsaid. Over or fictitious capitalization, monopolistic tendencies leading to the destruction of fair competition, the decrease of producing cost with advance of the price to the consumer, are wrongs demanding a remedy; but the corrective cannot be safely applied when unreasoning denunciation, furious hostility and desire for partisan gain rule the legislative mind, and truckling to popular outcry sways the judicial decision.

"In considering the course of State legislation on the subject of combinations, one cannot but be struck with some inconsistencies that can only be explained by the necessities of politics. When it is considered that labor cost is the very large percentage of everything that is made and sold, it seems strange there should be no inhibition upon organizations that exercise a complete and monopolistic control of about all the trades and exist to maintain the price of wages or to increase them. We read no enactment and hear no denunciation of combinations that, by most drastic methods, frequently bringing widespread ruin in their train, add largely to the cost of both the conveniences and necessaries of life. Statutes afford many strange contrasts, but none more remarkable than this—that combinations may exist and be fostered to advance to the consumer the cost of labor, but organizations to ad

such a combination is, as a general thing, not that prices are raised, but that it rests in the power and discretion of the trust or corporation taking all the plants of the several corporations to raise prices at any time if it sees fit to do so. It does not relieve the trust of its objectionable features that it may reduce the price of the arti. cles which it manufactures, because such reduction may be brought about for the express purpose of crushing out some competitor or com

vance the price of the finished article are to be punished with severity. The reconciling of these inconsistencies and the attempted enforcement of the State laws solving the most absorbing problems will be watched with the most intense interest. The earnest hope of every patriot will be that those who write the law, those who construe its meaning, and those who enforce it will be guided by the light that will come from calm, deliberate investigation, and not be swayed by the catch phrases of the politi-petitors. . . . It makes no difference whether cal demagogue."-Law Notes.

ANTI-TRUST DECISION IN ILLINOIS.

The recent decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois in the case of the Glucose Sugar Refining Company is one of the most important and sweeping decisions on the subject of trade combinations rendered in this country. It had been claimed by the trust promoters that they could not be prevented from purchasing outright the property of any or all companies engaged in a given industry, for to do that would be to limit the right of contract, and, therefore, would be unconstitutional. The Glucose Company, a New Jersey corporation, claimed to have acted entirely within its charter privileges in acqulring the property of other corporations, but this fact the Illinois court holds to be immaterial, the real question being whether the Glucose Company had violated the law of Illinois in restraint of trade which, as is well known, is particularly stringent, by purchasing the property of numerous corporations engaged in the making of glucose. The court found that such a violation had taken place and laid down the rule that no sale of its property by one corporation to another is valid if the transaction has the effect of regulating prices, of limiting competition, or of controlling production. Glucose, it appears, can be manufactured successfully only within what is known as the "corn belt," which consists of an ellipse about 950 miles in length from east to west and 700 miles in width. All this belt is within 1,000 miles of Chicago, and by the terms of sale the parties conveying their property agreed not to manufacture glucose within 1,500 miles of that city. Hence their agreement was, in effect, a total or general restrain of trade, void not only by statute but at common law. The evidence having also shown that the Glucose Refining Company intended to acquire all the concerns in the country engaged in the manufacture of glucose, such purpose vitiated all purchases embodying it. On this point the court said: "The material consideration in the case of

the combination is effected through the instrumentality of trustees and trust certificates, or whether it is effected by creating a new corporation and conveying to it all the property of the competing corporations. The test is whether the necessary consequence of the combination is the controlling of the prices or limiting of production or suppressing of competition in such a way as thereby to create a monopoly. Necessarily when corporations thus situated unite together all their properties in one new organization, and permit the latter to operate their properties, competition will be suppressed, and the new corporation will possess the power to limit production and control prices."

The court expressly declares that corporations can dispose of such property only as they do not require in carrying on their business, and that the power of the Glucose Company to acquire property was limited to the acquisition of such property only as its business required; the property of competing concerns not being included. It would seem to follow that the Glucose Company must reconvey the property it purchased, as the court now deelares illegally, to its original owners. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall go as far as this, it would seem that the trust questlon ought to be settled speedily, but corporation managers are exeeedingly resourceful and ingenous, and many yet find ways of circumventing even this sweeping decision.-The Albany Law Journal.

RIGHT OF LEVY ON UNRIPE CROPS.

At common law crops which require expenditure of labor, fructus industriales, are personalty, and as such are subject to levy and sale on sheriff's writ: Kimball v. Sattley, 55 Vt. 285. And, apart from statute, this general rule would seem to apply also in the case of unripe crops. In the recent case of Tipton v. Martzell, 57 Pac. Rep. 806 (Wash.), the Supreme Court of Washington takes a different view. There a lessee of land contracted with his lessor to harvest a crop of wheat and deliver one-third of it to his landlord. In pursuance of a judgment against

the tenant a sheriff levied on the growing crop three months before its maturity. The court held that the levy could not be made, for owing to the condition of the property its severance from the soil would result in no gain to the creditor and considerable loss to the debtor. Furthermore, the serving of the writ would abrogate the contract and extinguish the landlord's interest in the crop.

that if a man marries a woman who is indebted to him the marriage discharges the debt. This ruling was made in a suit taken through the courts by William R. Gosnell against his wife. He had loaned her $4,000, and then, getting better acquainted, he married her. In the Clark County Circuit Court a novel case has just been stricken from the books. It was entitled Smith v. Stuart, and was brought for the These difficulties, however, are more apparent possession of an engagement ring after the enthan real. The levy and sale do not require gagement had been broken by the young immediate severance of the crop from the soil woman. Albert Smith was jilted by Nellie with a consequent loss to the debtor and small Stuart. She refused to return his ring. He ingain to the creditor. The vendee under sheriff's stituted suit. Mrs. Stuart's mother presented as sale would have a reasonable time in which to an offset a bill for gas and coal used in the courtremove the goods,-and in the present case a ing. A trial resulted in a decision in favor of reasonable time" would fairly extend to the the defendant. Smith took an appeal, but later maturity of the crop. This seems the true re-reconsidered and abondoned the suit. Mrs. sult on principle,-to hold otherwise is to defeat | Clarence Peterman, of Montgomery county, has the very object for which the levy is allowed: just been held to ante-nuptial contract, which Peacock v. Purvis, 2 Brod. & Bing. 362. The provided that she should cut her husband's hair second difficulty which influenced the court and furnish him with hot bread every meal. was the existence of the agreement between She became negligent on her contract and sued the landlord and the tenant. But by this con- for a divorce. In the suit which followed the tract the landlord had no estate in the grain | contract was brought in and a divorce was until the crop had ripened and was divided. | denied her-Chicago Law Journal.

66

Until then the wheat, being still personal prop

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Webb on Passenger and Freight Elevators, vol. I.

1st vol. Greenleaf's Evidence, 16th ed.
Cooley, Constitutional Law, 3rd ed.
May's Criminal Law, 2nd ed.

erty of the tenant, was subject to seizure. It is Recent Publications Received in Law Library. indeed possible that the court so construed the contract as to make the parties tenants in common of the crop. Such is an ordinary form of contract in similar cases: But in this event the sheriff might seize the whole, sell the interest of the debtor, and the vendee by the sale would simply become a tenant in common with the landlord. It was also suggested that the agree- | ment here was for services to be performed only by the lessee. But the landlord's personal | wishes alone should not operate to defeat the creditor's right. On principle and on authority, then, it seems clear that the levy should have been allowed.-Harvard Law Review.

ODD CASES IN DIVORCE COURTS.

Indiana courts have made four novel rulings recently upon matrimonial matters. In a suit taken up from Putnam county, the court decided that there was no cause for divorce in the discovery that the wife had a glass eye which had passed off as the real thing. The court stated that if the husband had not discovered the fact during the several months he had gazed into her dreamy eyes, it was surely a good thing and would not interfere with domestic happiness. The groom claimed "false pretense." The Supreme Court has just decided

Principles of Equity by George Tucker Bispham, 6th ed.

Modern Law of Municipal Securities by Bayard T. Hainer.

Brown on Negligence in Pennsylvania, vol. 3.
Monopolies and Industrial Trusts. Beach.
The Annotated Corporation Laws of all the
States, vol. III. North Carolina-Wyoming.
By Cumming-Gilbert-Woodward.

Desty's Federal Procedure, 9th ed.
Cook on Corporations.
Commentaries on the Law of Corporations,
vol. VII. Seymour D. Thompson.

-The general and notorious recognition of an illegitimate son by his father, which will entitle him to inherit real and personal property of his father, is held, in Van Horn v. Van Horn (Iowa), 45 L. R. A. 93, to be sufficient to satisfy requirements of the statutes of the State where the property is situated, although it took place in another State where the parties resided at the time, and in which the son might have no such right to inherit.

Pittsburgh Legal Journal thirty days' notice, in writing, of his intention ;

ESTABLISHED 1853.

EDWARD B. VAILL, Editors. THOMAS EWING, Jr.,

N.S., Vol. XXX.

O. S., Vol. XLVII.)

that such notice was duly given by the plaintiff to the association, and she tendered to the officers of the association the sum of $952.30, which she alleges was sufficient to pay the unpaid principal, dues, premium, interest and fines at No.19. the time of that tender; and that this tender was refused by the officers of the association as being insufficient in amount.

PITTSBURGH, PA., NOVEMBER 29, 1899.

Court of Common Pleas No. 2,

ALLEGHENY COUNTY.

KEYER v. THE COSMOPOLITAN SAVINGS & LOAN ASSOCIATION OF PITTSBURGH, PA.

Mortgage-Tender of payment.

Where a mortgagor has tendered the mortgagee the amount of the mortgage, and the latter refuses to take the money, the remedy of the mortgagor is under the Act of April 3, 1851, by paying the money into court.

That act is exclusive, and a bill in equity for satisfaction of the mortgage will not lie.

No. 458 July T., 1899. In Equity.

SHAFER, J. Filed November 18, 1899. The bill is by a borrowing stockholder against a building and loan association to require the association to accept a certain amount, claimed to be the full amount of the debt remaining due upon a mortgage to the association, and for satisfaction of the mortgage, and an injunction to prevent the issuing of a sci. fa. thereon by the association.

An answer was put in by the defendant setting up, among other things, by way of demurrer, want of jurisdiction in the court to grant the remedies prayed for, and the cause was heard upon this demurrer.

The facts, as disclosed by the plaintiff's bill, are that the defendant is a building and loan association, organized under the laws of Pennsylvania and doing businers in the city of Pittsburgh; that the plaiutiff, Lottie M. Keyer, is a member of the association defendant, and borrowed from said association $1,250 upon a mortgage on her property, made in September, 1896, in the usual form of such mortgages, securing the payment to the association monthly, of dues, interest and premium; and has paid thereon to the association a considerable number of monthly installments; that one of the by-laws of the association provides that a borrower may repay his loan, of one or more years standing, by discharging all obligations to the association, and giving the board of directors

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW.

1. The Act of April 3, 1851, P. L. 868, sec. 14, 1st Purdon, 656, provides a complete remedy for the plaintiff, so far as she seeks to have the mortgage satisfied, and her property released from the lien thereof, by paying into court the full amount claimed by the mortgagee. This remedy appears to be exclusive.

2. So far as the plaintiff desires to have the association enjoined from issuing a sci. fa. upon the mortgage, we are entirely unable to see what damage can accrue to the plaintiff if a sci. fa. is so issued. Having made, as she alleges, a tender of all that is due upon the mortgage, her remedy, upon the issuing of the sci. fa., will be to plead the tender and pay the money into court, and this remedy will be complete and adequate.

Let the bill be dismissed at plaintiff's cost. For plaintiff, Wm. A. Hudson. For defendant, Brown & Stewart.

Court of Common Pleas No. 3,

ALLEGHENY COUNTY.

SCHWARTZ v. THE UNITED TRACTION CO.

Negligence-Care of children.

Where a parent leaves his four-year old child playing on the pavement and goes away where he cannot watch the child, and it is killed by a car passing along the street, the parent is guilty of contributory negligence and cannot recover damages from the traction company.

No. 409 May T., 1898.

Opinion by EVANS, J. Filed November 11, 1899.

The plaintiff lives on Third street, in the city of McKeesport, on which street the defendant company operates a line of electric cars. In March, 1898, the child of the plaintiff, four years old, was killed while crossing the track of the defendant by being hit by a car. The evidence showed that the plaintiff keeps a store on Third street, and on the day in question he left his two children, six and four years respectively, playing

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