Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/256

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216
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

be generally, if not invariably, impossible for him to sue upon his claim until some time after the debt is contracted. Moreover, to assert that the mortgagee would be surprised by a seizure after two years is to beg the question. He is not surprised if the law entitles such creditor to protection whenever he attaches. The mortgagee knows that he runs the risk of his lien being defeated by such a creditor if he fails for a time to file his mortgage; and if the right to priority has once attached to such creditor's debt, and if it can be secured by a seizure before the mortgage is filed, wherein is the mortgagee detrimented if such seizure is allowed priority when made after the mortgage is filed? Weare aware of decisions which place a different construction upon similar statutes. We had examined them before the original opinion in this case was written, but could not give them our approval. To follow them would conduct us to this anomalous position: Had the attaching creditor in this case been met at the farm by an offer to give him a mortgage on the same property, and had this offer been accepted by him, there is not an adjudication which would have upheld this mortgage as a lien prior to the unfiled mortgage had the former been received merely as security with- out any extension of time or other act on the part of the creditor to his prejudice. And yet, by a refusal to accept security, it is contended that, under the same statute which has denied him protection as mortgagee, the creditor has actually increased his rights, and has secured protection. He has been benefited by his rejection of the proffered security. A number of Minnesota cases are cited as controlling. They are not at all in point. In Murch v. Swensen, 40 Minn. 421, 42 N. W. Rep. 290, the question arose under the Minnesota statute of frauds, providing that every sale, unless accompanied by an immediate delivery, and followed by an actual and continued change of possession, etc., is presumed fraudulent and void as against creditors, etc., unless it appears that the transfer was made in good faith. The word “creditors” as used in this statute, is expressly defined by the next section to mean all persons who are creditors of the vendor at any time