Collins v. Riggs

To redeem property which has been sold under a mortgage (as is alleged irregularly) it is not sufficient to tender the amount of the sale. The whole mortgage-money must be tendered, or, if suit be brought, be paid into court.

At the same time with the preceding case was heard another from the same Circuit Court, and .similar to it in all respects, with, however, one additional feature. It was the case of

IN this case, Riggs had brought ejectment in the court below against Collins to-recover a lot, one of the several ones mentioned in the preceding ease as having been mortgaged by Russell to the United States, and bought by Corcoran from the United States after the foreclosure by the government of their mortgage and the purchase in by them of all the several lots included in it. Riggs was the grantee of Corcoran. The lot in controversy in this case, like that in controversy in the preceding case, had been conveyed previously to the mortgage, by a deed not put on record, to'Breese. On. the trial, the defendant made the same objections to Riggs’s title, that in the preceding case he had made to Morris’s; to w.it, that Breese, as grantee of Russell, of the lot, prior to the'date of the mortgage to the United-States, and so owner of the equity of redemption, had not been brought into the foreclosure suit; and assuming this to be true the defendant inferred ,and assumed that the mortgage was still, therefore, in existence. -He then offered to prove that during the pendency of the present' suit in ejectment he had tendered to Riggs the amqunt for which this particular lot now in controversy had been struck off at the marshal's sale, together with the taxes, interest, and costs; informing the plaintiff at the time of this tender that he, the defendant, was willing to treat him, the plaintiff, as the equitablo assignee of so nuch of tbe mortgage as had been paid at the sale for the land in controversy, and that he wished to redeem the said land, and that he, the defendant, made the tender for that purpose;, which tender the plaintiff declined to receive; the de-< fendant offering to prove, further, that the said sum of money was then paid into court as a tender to redeem the land in con-' • troversy from the mortgage. The court below decided, simply, that the evidence as presented was not competent or sufficient to constitute- a defence to the action, but upon what ground this decision was made did •not appear. •