12-149.Title acquired at sale.

This section protects confidence in judgment sales by shielding the title a purchaser acquires when the underlying judgment is later reversed, modified, or set aside on review. It applies where the court had jurisdiction of the subject matter and the parties, and where the purchaser was not a party to the proceeding, along with a bona fide assignee or pledgee for value of the certificate of sale who was also not a party (regardless of whether the purchaser at the sale was a party or not).

Absent one of two exceptions, that acquired right, title, and interest survives even if the judgment underlying the sale is reversed, modified, or set aside in a later proceeding to review it. The first exception is a pending appeal that operated as a stay of enforcement of the judgment at the time of the sale, assignment, or pledge. The second is a petition under Section 2-1401 already filed at that same time.

Together, these rules let a buyer or assignee at a judgment sale rely on the sale's finality without independently investigating whether the underlying judgment might later unravel, so long as neither of those two specific pending challenges existed when the sale, assignment, or pledge took place.