ARTISANS' LIENS COMPETING WITH CLAIMS OF CONDITIONAL SALE VENDOR OR CHATTEL MORTGAGEE

Authors

Abstract

The privilege of the artisan or materialman who has performed services or furnished materials in respect of a chattel in his possession to withhold such possession until paid the amount of his charges may be an effective security. Likewise, a chattel mortgagee or conditional vendor may be quite secure. But when a mortgagor or conditional vendee in possession has bailed the chattel to one whose services entitle him, either under the common law or a statute, to a lien for his charges therefor, there are plenty of chances for trouble. Liens being an invasion upon or subtraction from the totality of rights, privileges, etc., that make up ownership, a slice, so to speak, off the ownership, it would seem quite clearly to follow that only owners or those acting for owners could, in the ordinary case, create liens. And if the view be taken that conditional vendors or chattel mortgagees have not ownership but merely liens, the problem does not disappear, for by hypothesis their shares in the ownership were created and vested in them prior to the interest under the claimed artisan's lien. The following language of Mr. Chief Justice Marshall in Rankin v. Scott, 12 Wheat. 177, 179, as a statement of a general principle is no doubt sound: "The principle is believed to be universal, that a prior lien gives a prior claim, which is entitled to prior satisfaction, out of the subject it binds, unless the lien be intrinsically defective, or be displaced by some act of the party holding it, which shall postpone him in a court of law or equity to a subsequent claimant."

Recommended Citation

ARTISANS' LIENS COMPETING WITH CLAIMS OF CONDITIONAL SALE VENDOR OR CHATTEL MORTGAGEE, 22 Mich. L. Rev. 46 (1923).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol22/iss1/5