Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/79

 64 FEDERAL REFOBTEB. �right to wait and speculate upon the chance of the vessel being sold. In this case it made no difference tp the vendee whether the libel was filed before or after hia purchase, so long as he had no actual notice of the claim. �In The City of Tawas, 8 Cent. Law J. 191, I l.ad occasion to ob- serve that claims are not pronounced stale upon the sole ground of estoppel. In this case the claim of a material-man accrued shortly before the mortgage was given, and it was insisted that although the libellant waited for a considerable time before filing his libel, the claim had not become stale as against the mortgagee, as it was not stale when the mortgage was given, and there having been jio change in the relative situation of the parties up to the time of filing the libel, the mortgagee had not been injured by the delay. I felt obligea to hold, however, that the crediter was bound to use due diligence himself, and that the court could not enter into nice inquiries as to how far the subsequent purchaser had been damnified by his failure to proceed immediately. �If libellants had taken ont their attachment in the spring of 1874, and kept it alive by repeated renewals, I would have enforced the claim even at this late date ; but after being guilty of such inexcusa- ble laches, he canuot be heard to say that he filed the libel before the sale was made. ��� �