The property involved in this suit is certain real estate in the city of Chicago, covered by a mortgage, executed January 29, 1870, by W. H. W. Cushman and wife to secure the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company in the payment of $75,000 five years thereafter, with interest, payable semi-annually, at the rate of 9 per cent. per annum. The property was thereafter conveyed to W. H. Cushman, subject, however, to that mortgage.
The local law, in force when the mortgage was given, provided that upon a sale of lands or tenements, under execution, the officer should give to the purchaser a certificate showing the property purchased, the sum paid therefor, or, if the plaintiff is the purchaser, the amount of his bid and the time when the purchaser (unless the property be redeemed as provided in the statute) will be entitled to a deed. A duplicate of such certificate, signed by the officer, is required to be filed by him in the office of the county recorder within 10 days from the sale. Within 12 months from the sale, the defendant, his heirs, executors, administrators, or grantees may redeem by paying the purchaser, or the officer for his benefit, the sum bid by the former, with interest thereon at the rate of ten per cent. per annum from date of sale. Whereupon the sale and certificate becomes null and void. After the expiration of 12, and at any time before the expiration of 15, months from the sale, a judgment creditor (even one who became such after the expiration of 12 months from the sale, Phillips v. Demoss, 14 Ill. 413) may redeem by suing out execution, placing the same in the hands of the proper officer, (whose duty is to indorse thereon a levy upon the property to be redeemed,) and by paying to such officer, for the use of the purchaser, his executors, administrators, or assigns, the amount for which the premises were sold, with interest at the rate of ten per cent. per annum from the date of sale. The officer, having filed in the county recorder's office a certificate of the redemption by such judgment creditor, is required to advertise and offer the property for sale under the execution. The judgment creditor, thus redeeming the property, is considered as having bid at the execution sale the amount of the redemption money paid by him, with interest from the date of redemption to the day of sale. If no larger bid is offered, the property is struck off and sold to such judgment creditor, who becomes entitled to a deed.
The statute provides that the whole or part of any lands sold under execution may be redeemed by a judgment creditor in the like distinct quantities or parcels in which the same are sold; also, if there be no redemption within the time prescribed, that the purchaser is entitled to a deed, further, that 'lands sold under and by virtue of any decree of a court of equity for the sale of mortgaged lands' may be redeemed by the mortgagor, his heirs, executors, administrators, or grantees, and by judgment creditors, in the same manner as is prescribed for the redemption by such parties, respectively, of lands sold under executions at law. By a subsequent act, in force July 1, 1879, the foregoing statutes were amended so as to require the party redeeming to pay the amount going to the purchaser, with interest at the rate of only eight per cent. per annum.
This act continued in force till after July 1st, 1879.
[Statement of Case from pages 54-56 intentionally omitted]
On the twelfth day of December, 1877, the insurance company instituted a suit for foreclosure, in which a final decree of sale was passed on the fourteenth day of July, 1879. The sale occurred on the fifteenth day of August, 1879, when the insurance company became the purchaser of various lots, into which the mortgaged premises had been subdivided, at prices aggregating in amount the principal and interest of its debt-the latter being computed up to the decree at the rate stipulated in the mortgage, and thereafter at the statutory rate of 6 per cent. per annum. The sale was duly confirmed by an order entered October 10, 1879.