In re German Publication Society

LEARNED HAND, District Judge.

It is everywhere agreed that the significant distinction between a pledge and a mortgage is that in the first the creditor gets no title, but what is vaguely called a “special property,” while in the second he does. Although no pledge is good without the pledgee’s possession, the converse is not true of chattel mortgages, under which the goods sometimes do, and always may, pass at once into the mortgagee’s possession. If only the forms of the transaction were observed by the courts, it would be easy to distinguish a pledge from a mortgage, because any absolute…