Robert Cooper Grier

“ The mere act of creating a court of record, and specifying the limits of its jurisdiction by State authority, extends the liens of judgments throughout these limits; and the application of the same rule to the Circuit Courts of Pennsylvania must, in accordance with received principles, be attended with like results.
'If this is not the rule in the case under consideration, what is the limit as to territory of the lien of a judgment in the Federal courts of this State? ”

“ When, therefore, land is once sold on execution, and converted into money, all persons who claim to have liens upon it by judgment or otherwise (with a few exceptions) are compelled to follow the money or lose their security. Hence it often happens that, when money is made by sale of land on a junior judgment, the plaintiff does not obtain satisfaction, and is sometimes involved in a fresh litigation with creditors claiming to have prior liens. In these contests the defendant is usually an indifferent spectator. ”

“ In other districts, the sheriff avoided responsibility by paying the money into court, and leaving the claimants to settle their controversies in such manner as the court might order, or the parties elect. In such cases, the court usually disposed of the money on the motion of the parties interested, by ordering the liens to be paid in the order of their priority, as certified by the clerk. But as it not unfrequently happened that the junior judgment creditors contested the validity of the lien of the older judgment, because it was not regularly revived, or for other reasons ”

“ The judgment or order of the court on a summary motion, or a collateral question arising like the present on the suggestion of a third party, is not re examinable on a writ of error issued on the judgment with which it may happen to be connected.
The Circuit Court of the United States has adopted the forms of process in execution of the State courts, and the laws and practice of Pennsylvania, for taking lands on execution and disposing of their proceeds. ”

“ No local laws existing in the Colonies of New York, Virginia, Maryland, and others, the British statute became the law, and the construction it received varied more or less in the several jurisdictions. ”