UNION NATIONAL BANK, Appellant, v. M.C.C. (a construction company), Appellee.

MOTION TO DISMISS APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT, SIXTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, MONTSERRADO COUNTY. Argued January 11, 1973. Decided February 2, 1973. 1. The failure of a surety to append to an appeal bond his affidavit and the certificate of valuation of his real property obtained from the Bureau of Revenues, does not change the fact that he has encumbered his property to the amount pledged by him as security. 2. Hence, in the instant case, prior pledges though unsupported by necessary documents reduce the unencumbered value of the property by the total amount of the prior pledges. 3. The absence of revenue stamps required on documents, a ground for dismissal of an appeal, can only be excused when cancellation procedures employed establish their usage. 4. No party may benefit from deliberate violation of the law, especially when another is injured thereby. 5. The Supreme Court cannot concern itself with the relative amounts in litigation, but will let the law prevail. A motion was made to dismiss an appeal from a judgment in excess of $5o,000.00, alleging failure to affix revenue stamps to the appeal bond’s supporting papers and an insufficiency of real property pledged by the sureties because of prior pledges of the same property in other cases. The motion was granted and the appeal dismissed. Samuel E. H. Pelham and Joseph Williamson for appellant. Dessaline T. Harris for appellee. MR. CHIEF JUSTICE PIERRE delivered the opinion of the Court. This case was tried in the June 1972 Term of the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court, and final judgment was rendered on September 6, 1972. Appeal from this judgment was announced and completed with the filing on September 19 487 488 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS of the appeal bond and the notice of completion of appeal. The case was docketed in the Supreme Court, and came on for hearing on January II, 1973. The appellee has moved to dismiss the appeal, alleging that the affidavit of sureties is unstamped and the bond is insufficient. According to the papers the amount involved in litigation is $55,439.60, and the bond accompanying the appeal was approved for $82,500.00. The appellee has contended in his motion that the revenue certificate attached to the bond shows that one of the appellant’s sureties owns property recorded in the Bureau of Revenues in the amount of $100,000.00, and the other surety owns only $10,000.00 worth of real property. However, the property of the first surety as shown by the certificate of the Clerk of the Debt Court for Montserrado County is encumbered to the extent of $94,670.44, representing previous liens on his property when he stood bond in five cases now pending before the aforesaid Debt Court. Thus, of the $82,500.00 for which the bond was approved, there is now only $15,329.56 in unencumbered real property available to indemnify the appellee. Appellant has filed a fifteen-count resistance to the motion, in which he has denied that his affidavit of sureties was filed without a revenue stamp, and has also denied that the property pledged to his appeal bond is in any way encumbered. We shall review these two points in the reverse order of their presentation. In denying the insufficiency of the property pledged by one of the sureties to his appeal bond, the appellant argued that suretyship in the prior pending cases in the Debt Court constitutes no lien upon the property in the absence of documentary proof thereof in the office of the Clerk of the Debt Court as reflected by a certificate of valuation from the Bureau of Revenues to the bond in each case, which proof the Clerk of the Debt Court has certified was not furnished. LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 489 The argument is untenable in view of the clear language contained in the statute. “Lien on real property as security. A bond upon which natural persons are sureties shall be secured by one or more pieces of real property located in the Republic, which shall have an assessed value equal to the total amount specified in the bond, exclusive of all encumbrances. Such a bond shall create a lien on the real property when the party in whose favor the bond is given has it recorded in the docket for surety bond liens in the office of the clerk of the Circuit Court in the county where the property is located, or, if it is in the Hinterland, in the office of the clerk of the Circuit Court in the nearest county” Civil Procedure Law, L. 1963-64, ch. III, � 6302 (2). We have no docket in the circuit courts for surety bond liens in Liberia at present, instead since all real property is on record in the Bureau of Revenues in each county, certification of property valuation for appeal bonds is made by officials of the said Bureau of Revenues. The act of becoming a surety to a bond in itself creates an encumbrance on one’s property, so long as that property has been registered in the Bureau of Revenues. Each bond must be accompanied by an affidavit of surety, and each affidavit of surety must contain certain information: (a) that the surety owns the property offered as security; (b) a description of the property, sufficiently identified to establish a lien; (c) a statement of the total amount of the lien, unpaid taxes, and other encumbrances; (d) a statement of the assessed value of the property offered. Civil Procedure Law, supra, � 6302(3). In view thereof we assume that no court will accept as valid any bond unless the requirements have been strictly observed. Since the law commands that bonds filed in courts of the Republic should comply with these requirements, why would any party file a bond falling short of these requirements? The statute requires that valuation 490 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS of property shall be certified by the Bureau of Revenues, and the certificate attached to each bond in order to validate it. Civil Procedure Law, supra, � 6302 (4.). The reason for such a requirement is to assure that the surety is indeed a landowner, and that such land is registered. For only in such a case could the adverse party be indemnified against loss or injury growing out of the case. The failure to attach the revenue certificate to the bond, however, does not remove the encumbrance on the surety’s property, if that property is on record in the Bureau of Revenues. It is, therefore, our opinion that the surety’s admission of not having attached his affidavits and certificates of the Bureau of Revenues to the bonds he was surety to in the Debt Court, does not change the fact that he is a surety on the appeal bonds in these five pending cases and that he encumbered his real property on record in the Bureau of Revenues to the extent of the total penalty of such several bonds. It is interesting to note that the appellant has not denied the fact that Saju Tarawally, the surety referred to, is also surety in the five cases pending in the Debt Court. His argument before this Court was that Tarawally did not attach Bureau of Revenues certificates and his affidavits to the said bonds in the Debt Court and that this failure exempted his registered property from encumbrance. From the argument made before us, we have to assume that this admitted failure was deliberate. And we cannot overlook the assumption nor escape the conviction that this deliberate failure to comply with a statutory requirement was intended to hurt the interests of opposing parties. Any act which knowingly violates the law must be repudiated by the courts. No party can be allowed to benefit by his deliberate violation of law as admitted, especially where such violation hurts the interests of others. The Stamp Tax Act of our Revenue and Finance Law, LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS 491 referred to above, not only commands that specified documents must bear revenue stamps to make them valid, but also requires that stamps placed on such documents be cancelled. It has also specified the manner of such cancellation. “571. Stamps to be cancelled. When a revenue stamp is affixed to any instrument or document listed in section 570 above, it shall be defaced and cancelled as provided in this section: “(a) If the stamp is affixed by the government official who issues or registers the document or instrument, he shall cancel the stamp by means of perforation in the presence of the person to or for whom such document or instrument is issued or registered and who is liable for the payment of the stamp tax thereon. Such perforation shall be made after the revenue stamp is attached to the document or instrument in such manner that such document or instrument shall bear the identical perforation. “(b) If the revenue stamp is purchased by a private person to be affixed to an instrument or document which requires a stamp under the provisions of section 570 above, he shall deface and cancel the stamp by means of perforation or by writing across it with permanent or indelible ink or pencil so that the stamp cannot be reused.” 1956 Code 35 :571. If appellant had cancelled the stamp on his surety’s affidavit in accordance with the requirement of the statute quoted above, there could have been no disputing the fact that a stamp was placed on the document. Our interpretation of this statute, in respect of private individuals stamping documents, is that the stamp should be cancelled either by perforation of the stamp after it has been placed on the document, or by writing across the stamp and the document, so that the writing appears on both sides of the attached stamp. Had either of these courses been followed, even though the stamp might have dropped off, 492 LIBERIAN LAW REPORTS as the appellant has contended, the perforation or the writing would have remained on the document itself, as proof that the statute had been obeyed. In the absence of such proof, we can only uphold the position taken by the appellee in his motion. We have over and again frowned upon dismissing cases without going into their -merits, and we have only dismissed when there was legal cause, and when there was no other alternative. In this case pure negligence compels dismissal in a case involving a large sum of money. During the argument appellant’s counsel stressed the point of a case of such magnitude being dismissed for the want of a twenty-five cent stamp on the affidavit. The Court cannot concern itself with sums of money involved in litigation; the law will apply with equal force and effect in the dismissal of a case involving a large sum, as it would for a small amount, so long as in either case the ground for dismissal was dictated by the laws of the land. As much as we would have liked to go into the merits in the case we are prevented from doing so. The motion is, therefore, granted, and this case is dismissed with costs against the appellants. And it is so ordered. Motion to dismiss appeal granted.