Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/258

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218
NORTH DAKOTA REPORTS.

a valid attachment lien on the mortgagor's crops, thus altering his position to his disadvantage, relying upon the mortgage. This, under all of the authorities, constituted him a bona fide incumbrancer. The New York cases cited to support the view that the seizure before the actual filing of the instrument gives priority fully support this position. But the highest court in that state has not passed directly on this point. Karst v. Gane, 61 Hun, 533, 16 N. Y. Supp. 385, and cases there cited. Says Mr. Jones in his work on Chattel Mortgages, (§ 245:) “But in New York it is held that a mortgage not duly filed is void as against a general creditor whose claim has accrued during the continuance of the default in filing the mortgage, although the creditor is not in a position to raise the question until he has obtained a judgment or process against the property. The object of the act is to prevent the setting up of secret mortgages against persons who may deal with the mortgagor on the faith that his property is not thus incumbered. Therefore, when a creditor has obtained judgment and execution, he may go back to the origin of the debt, and show, if he can, that, when it was contracted, the incumbrance with which he is thus confronted was kept secret by being withheld from registry;” citing Thompson v. Van Vechten, 27 N.Y. 568; Stewart v. Beale, 7 Hun. 405; Fraser v. Gilbert, 11 Hun. 634. In this condition of the decisions in that state we believe that the court of appeals will finally settle the construction of their registry law, which is the same as ours, in accordance with the views we have herein expressed.

It is also urged that the description in the mortgage was not sufficient as to third persons until the mortgage was filed. It may be that the language of the opinion was susceptible of the construction that the statement in the mortgage that the property was on a certain section, in a particular township and range, was insufficient as to attaching creditors until the mortgage had been filed. But this is not our view. Whenever a description is challenged as insufficient, we are to inquire whether the creditor, after inspecting the instrument, and aided by the inquiries it