Case ID: mass_7/html/0065-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Parsons, C. J", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Mary Everenden and Elizabeth Everenden versus James Beaumont, the Tenant, and Abel Fisher, admitted by consent to defend with the Tenant.
    To a writ of entry, in which the demandants counted on the seisin of their father, and on an abatement on his death by a stranger; the tenant pleads a release from the demandants to him, pending the suit, of all their right. The demandants reply that they had bargained and sold the demanded premises to one W. D., and his heirs, they, and the said W. D., believing they had good right to convey the same; and that this action is sued for his use and benefit; of all which they allege the tenant to be well knowing before the execution of the release to him. Upon demurrer the replication was held bad.
    This action was a writ of entry in the post, in which the demand-ants claim two undivided tenth parts of the tenements described in their writ, and they count on the seisin of their father, Abijah Everenden, within fifty years, alleging that the tenant has no entry, but after an abatement of the heirs, on the death of their father, by one Josiah Bussey.
    * The general issue was pleaded ; and also, by leave of [ * 77 ] the Court, a plea in bar, in which the defendants allege that, pending the suit, the demandants have, by deed, released all their right to the said James Beaumont, then in the actual possession.
    To this plea in bar the demandants, after having oyer of the deed of release, reply that they, before the commencement of this action, believing and supposing that they had good right to sell and convey the premises, had bargained, sold, and conveyed the same to one William Dunbar and his heirs; and that the said William also believed and supposed that the demandants had such right to convey the same; and that this action is sued for the use and benefit of the said William; all which the defendants well knew before the execution of the said release to the said Beaumont by the demandants.
    To this replication there was a general demurrer, which was joined.
    The cause was briefly spoken to at the last October term in this county, by B. Whitman for the demandants, and by Wheaton for the defendants, and being continued nisi, Jackson, at the last March term in Suffolk, was heard in support of the replication. The opinion of the Court was afterwards delivered at the last-mentioned term by
   Parsons, C. J

The issue in law before us is on the sufficiency of the replication; and we are all satisfied that the replication is no sufficient answer to the bar.

It appears from the allegations of the demandants, that they were never seised in fact of the premises, but only of the right, as Bussey, on the death of their father, abated them. But this right could not pass by their conveyance to Dunbar, because the law will not permit any person to sell a quarrel, The deed, therefore, executed to Dunbar being void as a conveyance, it was competent for the demandants to release to Beaumont, he being actually seised of the freehold, either by right or by wrong; for the demandants have sued him as tenant of the freehold. But their release l * 78 ] will * operate to pass the right to the tenant in possession; and the right on which the action was founded having passed, the action can no further be maintained.

But it was said, in the argument, that the replication discloses facts confessed by the demurrer, which avoid the release as a fraud on Dunbar, for whose use the action is sued. If the release is shown to be fraudulent, it will have no legal operation in favor of the tenant, a party to the fraud. The facts thus disclosed are the prior deed executed to Dunbar, the suing the action for his use, and the knowledge thereof by Beaumont. Now, this knowledge of Beaumont can have no tendency to give any legal effect to the deed to Dunbar, the demandants’ right still remaining, not conveyed nor extinguished ; for the deed being void, as a conveyance, no collateral transaction whatever, under any circumstances, can give it any operation to pass the right. The demandants thus having a right which could pass by release to Beaumont, might regularly pass it, and were not estopped by any principle or maxim of law. The knowledge of Beaumont of the deed to Dunbar, as it cannot, on the one hand, give validity to that deed, so neither on the other hand can it defeat the release to himself.

The transaction between the demandants and Dunbar was pro hibited by law, and their mistakes, or ignorance of the law, can not avail him. Indeed, the buying up of titles by a stranger, when the grantor is not seised, is an offence at law; and it was a lawful act in Beaumont, who was in fact seised, to protect his title, by purchasing the release of the right in the demandants, notwithstanding his knowledge that an illegal attempt had been made to obtain that right by a conveyance. For it would be an unreasonable imputation upon the law, to charge it with avoiding a release, in order indirectly to give any effect to an illegal act.

The allegation, that the demandants, in selling to Dunbar, and this latter in purchasing, supposed and believed that they were acting lawfully, if it be true, can have no legal effect; nor if it be untrue, can it, from the nature of it, be traversed and put in issue.

*Let an entry be made, that it appears to the Court [ * 79 ] that the replication is bad and insufficient in law. 
      
      
         [Swett & Al. vs. Poor & Al., 11 Mass. Rep. 549. — Brinley vs. Whitney, 5 Pick 348.— Wolcott & Al. vs. Knight & Al. 6 Mass. Rep. 418.—Ed.]
     
      
       1 Hawk. P. C. c. 86.