Equitable title

“ It recites that, 'whereas it often occurs that persons against whom judgments or decrees are obtained, hold and possess, or claim lands, tenements, or hereditaments, by equitable title only, and the creditor or creditors of such persons are often without remedy, either at law, or in equity,' and then goes on to give the chancellor power to decree a sale of the equitable title ”

“ Simply to favor a visionary innovation for the destruction of resulting trusts and equitable titles, a class of titles resting upon the essential elements of all honest titles, truth and justice, and coeval with the very rudiments of equity law. ”

“ Bryar upon her equitable title, a procedure allowable in the courts of Pennsylvania, where an equitable ejectment is the full equivalent of and substitute for a bill in equity. Peterman v. Huling, 31 Pa. ”

“ It can have no operation to prevent the denial of an equitable transfer of title, which is not identical with the legal title or muniment of title which it may be relied on either to establish or protect. ”

“ And by the term 'property,' as applied to land, all titles are included,-legal or equitable, perfect or imperfect. 'It comprehends,' assaid by this court in Soulard v. U.S., 4 Pet. 511, 'every species of title, inchoate or complete. It is supposed to embrace those rights which are executory as well as those which are executed. ”

“ Doubtless new classes of cases may by legislative action be directed to be tried in chancery, but they must, when tested by the general principles of equity, be of an equitable character, or based on some recognized ground of equity interposition. ”

“ If one individual, as you suggest, through the effect of cunning and skill combined with inheritances, should obtain a legal title to the whole globe, it would be his to do what he pleased with as absolutely as if it were a garden patch, according to our law of property. ”

“ In such a case, a court of equity, whose appropriate and peculiar jurisdiction is to act upon the conscience of the person who holds the formal or legal title to the property, compels him to convey it to the person to whom he is bound in good conscience to make a complete title, thus uniting form to substance. ”

“ Where one party has acquired the legal right to property to which another has the better right, a court of equity will convert him into a trustee of the true owner, and compel him to convey the legal title. ”

“ The Constitution of the United States, in creating and defining the judicial power of the General Government, establishes this distinction between law and equity, and a party who claims a legal title must proceed at law, and may undoubtedly proceed according to the forms of practice in such cases in the State court. ”

“ Equity may be invoked to aid in the completion of a just but imperfect legal title, or to prevent the successful assertion of an unconscientious and incomplete legal advantage; but to abrogate or to assail a perfect and independent legal right, it can have no pretension. In all such instances, equity must follow, or in other words, be subordinate to the law. ”

“ But yet when the legal title to lands has passed from the United States to one party, when in equity and good conscience, according to the facts conceded, found, or established, and when, as a matter of law, in view of those facts, it ought to have gone to another, the former may be adjudged to hold the title in trust for the latter, true owner, and compelled to convey to him. ”

“ We have therefore attentively examined the record, and are of opinion it contains enough to get at and decide the merits.
It has been long and well established as a rule of law and equity, that a party must recover on the strength of his own title, and not on the weakness of his adversary's title. ”

“ Thus, the justification for equity's deciding legal issues once it obtains jurisdiction, and refusing to dismiss a case, merely because subsequently a legal remedy becomes available, must be re-evaluated in the light of the liberal joinder provisions of the Federal Rules which allow legal and equitable causes to be brought and resolved in one civil action. ”

“ The weight of authority is, we think, the other way. The lien of the vendor, if in the nature of a trust, is a secret trust; and, although to be preferred to any other subsequent equal equity, unconnected with a legal advantage, or equitable advantage which gives a superior claim to the legal estate, will be postponed to a subsequent equal equity connected with such advantage. ”

“ Even when equality is the object, there are sometimes better means of attaining it, than the inflexible rules by which law must necessarily proceed. If one of the coheirs, being of a quarrelsome or litigious disposition, stands upon his utmost rights, the law cannot make equitable adjustments; it cannot apportion the property as seems best for the collective interest of all concerned ”

“ Notwithstanding the strictness, particularly in the earlier cases in the courts of common law, with respect to assignments of equitable interests and choses in action, the books abound with cases showing that the rule at the common law has been much relaxed, or almost disregarded, by the courts of equity, which, from a very early period, have held that assignments for valuable consideration, of a mere possibility, are valid, and will be carried into effect upon the same principle as they enforce the performance of an agreement, when not contrary to their own rules or to public policy. ”

“ Again, it is well established that equity will entertain jurisdiction, and afford relief against the collection of a judgment, where, in justice and good conscience, it ought not to be enforced, as where there is a meritorious, equitable defense thereto, which could not have been set up at law, or which the party was, without fault or negligence, prevented from interposing. ”

“ In seeking equity, appellees must do equity, and, as a result has been reached which gives the awards of the commission a direction contrary to that which appellees had accepted as substantially equitable, we think equity requires that they should not be treated as occupying the same position as if they had maintained with vigor and promptness the rights which they found on April 7, 1884, they could assert. ”

“ The maxim 'he who seeks equity must do equity' presupposes that equitable, as distinguished from legal, rights, substantive or remedial, have arisen from the subject-matter in favor of each of the parties ”

“ It is sufficient, for our purpose, that every just law is dictated by reason, and that the practice of every legal court is regulated by equity. It is the quality of reason, to be invariable and constant; and of equity, to give to one man what, in the same case, is given to another. ”

“ If a legal right is capable of being the subject of an equitable obligation, the power of equity to impose an obligation upon the owner of it as such is subject to one limitation only, namely, that which is imposed by law. ”

“ It has also been asked, and may again be asked, why the words, "cases in equity," are found in this clause? What equitable causes can grow out of the constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States? To this the general answer of the Federalist [112] seems at once clear and satisfactory.
There is hardly a subject of litigation between individuals, which may not involve those ingredients of fraud, accident, trust, or hardship, which would render the matter an object of equitable, rather than of legal jurisdiction, as the distinction is known and established in several of the states. ”

“ The essence of equity jurisdiction has been the power of the Chancellor to do equity and to mould each decree to the necessities of the particular case. Flexibility rather than rigidity has distinguished it. The qualities of mercy and practicality have made equity the instrument for nice adjustment and reconciliation between the public interest and private needs as well as between competing private claims. ”

“ Discretion in the exercise of equitable remedies is an outgrowth of the purely personal intervention in extraordinary cases on grounds that appealed to the conscience of the chancellor in which equity jurisdiction has its origin. Something of the original flavor of equitable interposition remains in the doctrine of personal bar to relief, and in the ethical quality of some of the maxims which announce policies to be pursued in the exercise of the chancellor's powers. ”

“ So that, even at law, the imperative terms of the statute only make the usurious securities void, sub modo; the equitable rule being applied even by courts of law, whenever, consistently with technical reasons, it can be done. ”

“ The propositions are that an action to quiet title is a suit in equity, that equity acts upon the person, and that the person is not brought into court by service by publication alone. While these propositions are doubtless correct as statements of the general rules respecting bills to quiet title, and proceedings in courts of equity, they are not applicable or controlling here. ”

“ Shutting our eyes, then, to the fact that equitable rights are a fiction, and assuming them to have an actual existence, what is their nature, what their extent, and what is the field which they occupy? ”

“ I am not greatly concerned about the particular formula through which justice was attained. Consistency was preserved, logic received its tribute, by holding that the legal title passed, but that it was subjected to a constructive trust. [39] A constructive trust is nothing but the formula through which the conscience of equity finds expression." [40] Property is acquired in such circumstances that the holder of the legal title may not in good conscience retain the beneficial interest. Equity, to express its disapproval of his conduct, converts him into a trustee. ”

“ Another article explains what is meant by Equality, saying: "No man, nor corporation or association of men, have any other title to obtain advantages, or particular and exclusive privileges, distinct from those of the community, than what arises from the consideration of services rendered to the public; and this title being in nature neither hereditary, nor transmissible to children, or descendants, or relations by blood, the idea of a man being born a magistrate, lawgiver, or judge is absurd and unnatural." ”

“ That wherever the rights or the situation of parties are clearly defined and established by law, equity has no power to change or unsettle those rights or that situation, but in all such instances the maxim equitas sequiter legem is strictly applicable. ”

“ The substance of these authorities is that wherever a person obtains the legal title to land by any artifice or concealment, or by making use of facilities intended for the benefit of another, a court of equity will impress upon the lands so held by him a trust in favor of the party who is justly entitled to them, and will order the trust executed by decreeing their conveyance to the party in whose favor the trust was created. ”

“ If a court of equity would not allow an individual to take such a position, my conception is that a nation should not be allowed here to avail itself of an attitude so contrary to good faith and so violative of the elementary principles of justice and equity, and, especially, where the statute on which this controversy is based imposes upon the court the duty of administering the rights of the parties according to the principles of equity. ”

“ Dr. JOHNSON suggested, that the judicial power ought to extend to equity as well as law; and moved to insert the words, "both a law and equity," after the words "United States," in the first line of the first section. ”

“ In fashioning and effectuating the decrees, the courts will be guided by equitable principles. Traditionally, equity has been characterized by a practical flexibility in shaping its remedies [4] and by a facility for adjusting and reconciling public and private needs. [5] These cases call for the exercise of these traditional attributes of equity power. At stake is the personal interest of the plaintiffs in admission to public schools as soon as practicable on a nondiscriminatory basis. ”

“ The object of the law was to give title to the party who had resided upon and cultivated the land, and who was, therefore, in equity and justice, better entitled to the property than others who had neither resided upon nor cultivated it. ”

“ When I occasionally re-read the pleadings of the talented lawyers who defended or attacked me over the question of the King's inheritance, a sort of faintness overcomes me. Before so many words, in the face of so many reasons for and against, I feel that all things except equity can be expected of mankind. ”

“ Independently of any statute of limitations, courts of equity uniformly decline to assist a person who has slept upon his rights, and shows no excuse for his laches in asserting them. 'A court of equity,' said Lord CAMDEN, 'has always refused its aid to stale demands, where the party slept upon his rights, and acquiesced for a great length of time. ”

“ The doctrine of equitable discretion properly involves no more than a choice among remedies, an orderly management of judicial procedures. Doubtless there are times when equity should leave parties to their remedy 'at law,' i.e., to their remedy in the ordinary course of the threatened proceeding. ”

“ If equity, as applied to the construction of statutes by an eminent writer, means, 'the correction of that wherein the law, by reason of its universality, is deficient;' or, as another defines it, 'interpreting statutes by the reason of them,' may be applied to any case, we think it may to one, which, while it operates in restraint of common right, would, by a literal construction, make no saving in favour of persons residing in the most distant and unfrequented parts of this extensive continent. ”