24 runnnn. nuronrnn.
cuit court of Alexandria county, rendered on the twenty-fifth of May,
1859, must now be considered. Two of the Hay judgments antedated
- the decree; two of them were simultaneous with the decree, (the two
judgments and the decree having taken effect as of the lirst day of
the same term of the court which rendered all of them, viz: the six-
teenth of May, 1859;) and three of the judgments were subsequent
to the decree.
It will be necessary to consider the objections urged respectively
against the claim of Fowle, Snowden & Co., and the Hay judgments.
First, of Fowle, Snowden & Co.’s claim. The circuit court of Al-
exandria county, in a case in which that question was directly pre-
sented before it, decided that the Kinzer deed was not legally recorded
, in pursuance of the registration laws of Virginia, and did not constitute
a lien upon the property of the Alexandria & Washington Company.
Appeal was taken by Fowle, Snowden & Co., to the court of appeals
of Virginia; the appellants in their petition for the appeal assigning
as a ground of error, that the court below pronounced the registration
absolutely illegal, and not merely as it should have done, subordin-
ate to the Bradley deed. The appellate court rendered a general de-
cree of alhrmance, thereby establishing the validity and finality of
the decree below. It is true that the judge who delivered the opinion
discussed only the question whether Fowle, Snowden & Co. had no-
tice of the previous execution of the Bradley deed when they took the
Kinzer deed, but the decree itself, which was the act of the whole court,
aihrmed the decree below generally, and made no such limitation of
aihrmance in its decree as the individual judge had done of argument
in his opinion. In a very recent case, that of Davis v. Beazley, 7 5
Va. 491, the supreme court of appeals has put the matter at rest in
this state by holding that the grantee or beneficiary in a deed is not
allowed, as an ofhcer, to take an acknowledgment of the deed by the
grantor, with a view to its registration; that the certificate of such
acknowledgment is invalid, and hence a recordation of it based upon
such certificate is without 'effect. We are therefore relieved of the
necessity of considering whether this court, in an original case, would
hold that a director of a corporation, which makes a trust deed pre-
ferring himself over other creditors, is incompetent to take and cer-
tify the acknowledgment of that deed for registration in the additional
capacity of notary public; especially a deed which was agreed to be
held for a time from registration.
The debt of Fowle, Snowden & Co. therefore having no footing as
a lien by virtue of the Kinzer deed, stands exclusively upon the de-
cree of the twenty-seventh of May, 1859, establishing it. It is stated
by opposing counsel that no execution was ever taken out on this de-
cree. It does not seem to be pretended by any one that execution
was ever issued. The record does not show that it ever was. Not
only have ten years elapsed since the decree, but 20 years. As to
adverse lien creditors, the right to sue out a writ of scire facias upon