Sheriff's sale

“ The sale in this case is a great oppression on the complainants. They are ignorant, stupid, perverse, and poor. They lose by it all their property, and are ill fitted to acquire more. They are such as this court should incline to protect, notwithstanding perverseness.' The chancellor allowed the complainant to redeem the property by paying the purchase price and costs.
Byers v. Surget, 19 How. 303, was a case of sheriff's sale at a very grossly inadequate price, and the purchaser was an attorney in the case. ”

“ From these authorities (and others to the same effect could be cited) it is evident that although informalities occurring in a sheriff's proceedings under execution may be good ground for annulling a sale made by him if taken advantage of in time, yet that if the sheriff has authority to sell, and does sell, and execute a deed to the purchaser, the latter, if a purchaser in good faith, may set up the prescription of five years under the statute. ”

“ That act authorizes purchasers at a sheriff's sale to apply for a monition to all persons interested who can set up any right, title, or claim to the property described in consequence of any informality in the order or decree, or judgment of the court under which the sale was made, or any irregularity or illegality in the appointment and advertisement in time or manner of sale, or for any other defect whatsoever, to show cause why the sale should not be confirmed and homologated. If no cause be shown, the judgment of confirmation in the case is conclusive upon the world. ”

“ Even if made and delivered, it cannot help the title of the defendants, for the sheriff sold with express notice of Baldwin's rights, and his intention to enforce them, and no one who bought can be considered an innocent purchaser for value. If Holman had the bare, naked, legal title, without any beneficial interest in the property sold, and no possession, nothing passed by the sale. A purchaser, at a sheriff's sale, buys precisely the interest which the debtor has in the property sold, and takes subject to all outstanding equities. ”

“ It unnecessary to hold that the horses became the property of plaintiffs. It is enough that they, by receiving this deposit, have ratified the arrangement made by their attorney as to the sale which the sheriff was making, and if they desired a resale of the property they should have directed it. They cannot requdiate the action of their agent and attorney, and treat the sheriff as having made a completed sale, when in fact he had not. ”

“ Every deed issued by a sheriff at a sheriff's sale of real estate would be void if it could be shown that the sheriff was a usurper and not legally authorized to officiate in the duties of the office. ”

“ He must bid very low, so that the entire amount of sales shall not exceed three hundred dollars. After that, I will settle all with the sheriff, and you can go on as before. The sale can take place in the room back of your store, and even your wife up stairs need not know it. All you have to do will be to furnish the deputy-sheriff with a correct list of what is to be sold. You can call a whole row of shelves a lot, to be struck off at a single bid, and he will go through all the forms of a sale in a low voice, and the clerk and customers in your store will be none the wiser. ”

“ A sheriff's deed which is void for want of jurisdiction in the court under whose judgment the sale took place, is not such a conveyance as that a possession under it will be protected by the statute of limitations. ”

“ The sheriff to whom it is directed is required to proceed 'as upon execution.' If the debt is not satisfied by the sale of the property specifically mentioned in the order, it the operates as a fieri facias, under which the sheriff is directed to levy the residue of any other property of the defendant. It is therefore to all intents and purposes an execution, and the statute expressly requires that it must issue under the seal of the court. Without the seal it is void. We cannot distinguish it from any other writ or process in this particular. ”

“ The general authority of the officer in judicial sales under the act of 1851, in the exercise of which he has a large discretion, is limited and defined when applied to sales under judgments for delinquent taxes, by the provision declaring that the sheriff in selling the property assessed 'shall only sell the smallest quantity that any purchaser will take, and pay the judgment and all costs'-language which imports a negative upon a sale in any other way. ”

“ But if the manner in which the power is exercised is recited, it being a proper matter for recital, then the recital is evidence, not against strangers, but against the grantee and parties claiming under him. Thus, if a sheriff should refer in his deed to an execution issued to him, and recite that in obedience to it and the statute in such case provided, he had sold the property to the highest bidder, it would be presumed that he had done his duty in the premises, given the proper advertisement, and made the sale at public auction in the proper manner. ”

“ These sales are less expensive than when made on executions; more time is allowed to make them; the discretion of the court is exercised as to time, manner, and the terms of sale; whereas on sales by a sheriff, all is by compulsion and no credit is allowed; he cannot offer one entire piece of property for sale in parcels; the administrator can divide and sell as best subserves the interest of the heirs, and sell only so much as the emergency of the case requires. ”

“ If the judgment rendered against the plaintiff in error is well founded, then the sheriff who served the writ of attachment, the one who sold the property on execution, any person holding it in custody pending the attachment proceeding, the purchaser at the sale, and all who have since exercised control over it, are equally liable. ”

“ The law makes it the duty of the former to take the property into his possession, sell it, and after the sale to settle the order of privileges contradictorily with the other creditors. The proceeds in the hand of the curator represented the thing. The want of power in the lessor to seize prevented the prescription from running against him.'
It seems that the sheriff may also sell the goods absolutely upon condition of paying the lessor his rent. ”

“ In the four-year receivership period (1890-94) the sheriff sold the railroad three times; for $1,000,000, Jan. 20, 1892, to Zephin Job, representing bondholders; for $200,000, Dec. 15, 1893, to representatives of bondholders ; and for $100,000, Dec. 22, 1894, to A. B. Hammond and E. L. Bonner. The first sale failed, through delinquency of the bidders ; the second was set aside by the Court, which held the bid price $200,000 inadequate. The sheriff made five other attempts to sell the property in 1892-94.
Quarrels broke out early in the foreclosure proceedings, between factions of bondholders. ”

“ The provisions of the Statute of Frauds making the lien of execution attach only on delivery to the sheriff were generally adopted in America, and are still law in many of the states. The law as to the rights and duties of sheriffs is substantially the same as in England. The “homestead laws” (q.v.) which are in force in nearly all the American States exempt a certain amount or value of real estate occupied by a debtor as his homestead from a forced sale for the payment of his debts. This homestead legislation has been copied in some British colonies, e.g. ”

“ On April 15 the sheriff returned 'goods on hand not sold.' Subsequently, on various dates, a writ, an alias writ, and pluries writs of venditioni exponas were issued, upon each of which the sheriff made return to the effect that goods on hand were not sold or writ not executed for want of time. On August 21, 1930, nearly seventeen months after the levy of execution, petitioner directed the sheriff in writing that he must advertise all the goods taken under the original levy and sell them immediately. ”

“ The actual dishonesty was diluted through so many agents that it seemed an almost pure stream of lofty integrity. Ordinary jury-packing was an easy art. Of course the sheriff's office must connive at naming the talesmen; therefore it was necessary to elect the sheriff; consequently all the lawyers were in politics. Of course neither the lawyer nor the sheriff himself ever knew of any individual transaction! A sum of money was handed by the leading counsel to his next in command and charged off as "expense." This fund emerged considerably diminished in the sheriff's office as "perquisites." ”

“ Upon the entry the original invoices are to be produced and sworn to; and the whole objects of the act would be defeated by allowing a mere stranger to make the entry, or take the oath prescribed on the entry. The sheriff is in no just or legal sense the owner or consignee ”

“ The marshal may apply moneys, collected under several executions, the same as the sheriff. But this cannot be done as between the marshal and the sheriff.
A most injurious conflict of jurisdiction would be likely, often, to arise between the federal and the state courts; if the final process of the one could be levied on property which had been taken by the process of the other.
The marshal or the sheriff, as the case may be, by a levy, acquires a special property in the goods, and may maintain an action for them. ”

“ He would then arrest everybody indiscriminately who had any fraction of a deer, antelope or elk on his wagon, try the case then and there, put on a fine of $25 to $75, which if paid never reached the treasury, and then he would wait for another victim. The average man would rather pay the fine than go back a hundred miles through the mountains to stand trial, so the under-sheriff and justice thrived for some time. But one day the under-sheriff served his patent automatic warrant on a young man who refused to come down. ”

“ It rests alone on the idea that sheriffs' deeds and ordinary deeds inter partes are subject to different rules of construction. In regard, however, to the description of the property conveyed, the rules are the same, whether the deed be made by a party in his own right, or by an officer of the court. The policy of the law does not require courts to scrutinize the proceedings of a judicial sale with a view to defeat them. ”

“ This led the General Assembly to require that sheriffs collect public levies before they take any fees for themselves, and to prescribe a number of other rules for improvement of the conduct of their offices. [55]
The role of the sheriff in the tax collection process always was a difficult one. The procedure for financing the county, initially, was for the justices simply to compile lists of their expenses and the freeholders of the county, compute how much was needed from each freeholder to cover the cost of government, and direct the sheriff to collect it. ”

“ Every town has one or more constables, who serve warrants from the selectmen and writs from the law courts. They pursue criminals and take them to jail. They summon jurors. In many towns they serve as collectors of taxes, but in many other towns a special officer is chosen for that purpose. When a person, fails to pay his taxes, after a specified time the collector has authority to seize upon his property and sell it at auction, paying the tax and costs out of the proceeds of the sale, and handing over the balance to the owner. ”

“ In a little while mounted men were dashing out toward the hills so as to be ready to take the trail at dawn. It was plain enough, the agent argued, that the messenger had taken advantage of the circumstances and cleared out with the wealth in his possession. A thousand dollars reward was offered for his capture.
A deputy sheriff made up a posse of four, including himself, and put out for the scene of the robbery. They were among the first to leave town, and as they all knew the country, were soon upon the ground, where the open and empty safe left little to be explained. ”

“ The custom-house officers, armed with their writs, began breaking into warehouses and seizing goods which were said to have been smuggled. In this rough way they confiscated private property to the value of many thousands of pounds; but sometimes the owners of warehouses armed themselves and barricaded their doors and windows, and thus the officers were often successfully defied, for the sheriff was far from prompt in coming to aid them. ”

“ In thus appropriating other people’s money according to its professedly superior knowledge of the state’s needs, it does not often appear to give heed to standards of experience or of service rendered. Often it is but the old story of the influences back of the bill with this title: “An Act, providing for the appointment by the sheriff of —— County, of an undersheriff, fireman and court officers, and for their compensation and duties.” When the truth came out it appeared that the sheriff and the board of supervisors were of opposite parties. ”

“ After he had been in office a short time he began to consider improvements for the men. They were all cane-seating chairs for townspeople, an industry which netted the county but $400 a year and they paid an instructor $1200. The sheriff found that a good man who had some experience could earn only about five cents a day and others two and a half cents and that the industry was not a paying one. ”

“ We have no doubt that, in one form or another, the proper fees of the sheriff should be treated by federal law in the same manner as the attachments and judgments to which they appertain. Therefore, insofar as the accounts held by the Chase Bank were concerned, the Custodian was not entitled to a declaration that the sheriff's fees did not constitute a valid claim. ”