Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/303

 TOEKEB V. HAET. 295 �tract on the part of plaintiffs to receive a sum of money beyond what other creditors were to receive for assenting to a quasi composition; and such a con tract, if the assent of ail was required, the law pronounces void. �We regard the answer, liberally construed, as charging in substance that the contract sued on, if made, was one under which the plaintiffs were to receive a secret preference over other creditors of the same debtor, and this, if true, is a perfect defence. �The motion to strike eut is overruled. If plaintiff desires a more specifie statement of the points of defence he may move therefor, or he may demur to the answer and thus secure a more concise and clear statement. But the present motion for reasons stated cannot prevail. ���TuBNEB and another v. Haet and another. �(District Court, D. Eentueky. March 4, 1880.) �MOETGAGE — liBFOHMATION FOR UNCERTAINTÏ — EviDEKCB. — A COUlt Of �equity will not reforin a mortgage for uncertainty or inisdescription, when the evidence fails to identify the land intended to be mortgaged. �On pleadings and proofs in equity. �The bill sets forth that in 1878 defendant Hart was adjudi- cated a bankrupt, and defendant Ward elected his assignee ; that on the twenty-second of February, 1876, Hart exe- cuted to Hall and Allen a mortgage of real property, deseribed asfoUows: "One hundred acres of land on the Ohio river, opposite the Diamond Island, and being a part of the same land conveyed to me by Brooks' hoirs, as shown by deed of record in the Henderson eounty clerk's office, in Book P, page 532"; that on the fourteenth of August, 1877, Allen assigned to Hall, his co-mortgagee, ail his interest in the mortgage, and on the eighteenth of March, 1879, Hall assigned the same, as well as his own interest, to the complainants. �The bill further alleges that at the time the mortgage was executed the mortgagor, Hart, owned three parcels of land on ��� �