David Josiah Brewer

“ A party bidding at a foreclosure sale makes himself thereby a party to the proceedings, and subject to the jurisdiction of the court for all orders necessary to compel the perfecting of his purchase; and with a right to be heard on all questions, thereafter arising, affecting his bid, which are not foreclosed by the terms of the decree of sale, or are expressly reserved to him by such decree. ”

“ One holding a mortgage debt upon a railroad has the same right to demand and expect of the court respect for his vested and contracted priority as the hl der of a mortgage on a farm or lot. So, when a court appoints a receiver of railroad property, it has no right to make that receivership conditional on the payment of other than those few unsecured claims which, by the rulings of this court, have been declared to have an equitable priority. No one is bound to sell to a railroad company, or to work for it ”

“ Supplementing and strengthening this right, reserved and substantial, is the recital in the allowance of the appeal that the party purchasing is himself a bondholder, and trustee and representative of the other bondholders, which, if not conclusive as to the extent of interest in the litigation, is not to be ignored as wholly a matter of surplusage, but ought to be assumed as correct, and which is not to be disregarded simply because the evidences of that fact are not preserved in the record. ”

“ In a general way, it may be stated that they arise between a purchaser at foreclosure sales of certain railroad property, and intervening creditors. The initial question is as to the right of appellant, the purchaser, to his appeal. peal. It is urged that a purchaser at a sale under a decree has no right to appeal from its terms. He takes under it. His purchase is a voluntary act, and, coming in voluntarily to take under a decree, he may not challenge that under which he takes. ”

“ It is the exception, and not the rule, that such priority of liens can be displaced. We emphasize this fact of the sacredness of contract liens for the reason that there seems to be growing an idea that the chancellor, in the exercise of his equitable powers, has unlimited discretion in this matter of the displacement of vested liens. St. Louis, etc., R. Co. v. Cleveland, etc., Ry. Co., 125 U.S. 658-673, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1011. So that these intervenors acquired no right of priority by virtue of their antecedent contracts of sale. ”