Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 2).pdf/455

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YEATMAN v. KING ET AL.
429

gagor or the legislature thereafter to disturb.” The state cannot interfere with the remedy given by existing laws to enforce a contract when the consequence is an impairment of the creditor’s rights. This doctrine has perhaps been more frequently enunciated and applied in the cases of an attempted statutory extention of the mortgagor's right to redeem made after the mortgage had been executed. The courts, including the final arbiter of the question, the federal supreme court, have very properly held that such a law impaired the rights of the mortgagee under his security, as they affected the price which the real estate would bring on foreclosure. No one would be willing to pay as much fora piece of land, the possession of and absolute title to which he could not secure for several years after purchase, as he would be willing to pay for the same land with a right to immediate possession, or possession after the lapse of only one year. A law giving a right to redeem where no such right existed at the time of the execution of the mortgage, or materially enlarging a right of redemption already existing at the time of the execution of such mortgage, would directly and inevitably lessen the value of the mortgagee’s security, and therefore impair the obligation of the contract. In Howard v. Bugbee, 24 How. 461, the court adjudged as void, as impairing the obligation of a contract, a statute of Alabama conferring upon a judgment creditor of the mortgagor a right to redeem from mortgage foreclosure sale within two years thereafter, so far as such statute affected mortgages in existence when the law was passed. The court said: “The main ground of the defense in that suit was that the mortgage from Parsons, under which the defendant derived title, having been executed before the passage of the act providing for the redemption, the act, as respected this defendant, was inoperative and void, as impairing the obligation of the contract. The court of chancery so held, and dismissed the bill; but, on appeal to the supreme court, that court reversed the decree below, and entered a decree for the complainant. The case is now here on a writ of error to the supreme court. The only question involved in this case was decided in Bronson v. Kinzie, 1 How. 311. It was then held after a very careful und extended