Redondo Improvement Co. v. O'Shaughnessy

HENSHAW, J.

This is an action to foreclose a mortgage. Defendant O’Shaughnessy, mortgagor and former owner of the property, executed her note and mortgage in 1904. The debt matured three years thereafter. In 1905 she sold and conveyed the mortgaged property to Ellen O’Brien, who afterwards conveyed it to Alice B. Sullivan. She in turn conveyed it to George L. Mullen, and he in turn to Ida B. Moreland, defendant and appellant. Ellen O’Brien held record title to the property only from the twenty-fifth day of July, 1905, to the first day of August, 1905, when her conveyance to Alice B. Sullivan was recorded. It is stipulated by the parties that the original owner and mortgagor, O ’Shaughnessy, and her grantee by mesne conveyance, Alice

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B. Sullivan, were and remained continuously out of the state of California. Alice B. Sullivan made her conveyance to George L. Mullen by deed of quitclaim on the second day of March, 1911. This deed was recorded upon the ninth day of October, 1911. On that same day George L. Mullen’s quitclaim deed to defendant and appellant, Ida B. Moreland, was recorded. This action was commenced on October 14, 1911, within a few days after the recordation of the deed from Alice B. Sullivan to George L. Mullen and his quitclaim deed to appellant Moreland. It was, however, commenced more than four years after the maturity of the note and mortgage. Judgment passed for plaintiff.

Ida B. Moreland, the present holder of the record title, appeals, urging that the judgment is erroneous in that the running of the statute of limitations in favor of a subsequent grantee of mortgaged premises is not suspended by absence from the state or by any other act of the original owner or mortgagor. This principle is well established.

(Lord

v.

Morris,

18 Cal. 483;

McCarthy

v.

White,

21 Cal. 496, [82 Am. Dec. 754] ;

Grattan