Case Name: Lessee of Bentley's Heirs v. Deforest
Court: Supreme Court of Ohio
Jurisdiction: Ohio
Decision Date: 1826-08
Citations: 2 Ohio 221
Docket Number: 
Parties: Lessee of Bentley’s Heirs v. Deforest.
Judges: 
Reporter: Cases decided in the supreme court of ohio : upon the circuit at the special sessions in Columbus
Volume: 2
Pages: 201–202

Head Matter:
Lessee of Bentley’s Heirs v. Deforest.
Title to land can not be conveyed by assignment indorsed on the back of a deed.
Tried before Judges Pease and Burnet, in Trumbull county, 1826.
This was an action of ejectment. The plaintiff having offered in evidence, a deed conveying the premises in question, from Ad-gate to Yanderbarrack, with an indorsement thereon, subscribed by Yanderbarrack, by which he assigned all his right and title in the deed to Bentley, under whom the lessors of the plaintiff claimed as heirs at law, rested his cause.
Webb, for the defendant,
moved to overrule the testimony, and for a nonsuit, on the ground that the deed of assignment did not show a title to the premises in Bentley, the ancestor of the lessor.
*Wheeler., for the plaintiff,
contended that the laws of Ohio did not prescribe any particular form of transferring the title to real estate. That the assignment was, in fact, a deed, and that the intention of the parties was sufficiently manifest to require the court to give it effect.

Opinion:
By the Court :
There never has been a time, since the establishment of the territorial government, when the title to real estate could be conveyed by an assignment, indorsed on a deed. The ordinance for the government of the territory, provided that real estates might be conveyed by lease and release, or bargain and sale, signed, sealed, and delivered by the person, being of full age, in whom the estate might be; attested by two witnesses, provided such conveyances be acknowledged, or the execution thereof duly proved and recorded, etc. This form of conveying real estate has been recognized ever since.
The indorsement relied on as a deed conveys nothing but the instrument itself. It may vest in the assignee a right to the paper and the wax, but it can not affect the title to the land. It does not describe the land, or purport to convey it, much less does it contain the operative words of a grant. It is an assignment of all the right and title of the assignor in the deed on which it is written. In equity it might be considered as an executory contract, and on proof of the facts connected with it, might entitle the assignee to a decree for a specific performance, but it can not operate as a conveyance of the legal title.
Judgment for defendants.
Note by the Editor. — Same principle, ii. 234.