Case Name: Avis and Wife v. Lee and als.
Court: Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia
Jurisdiction: Virginia
Decision Date: 1883-05-10
Citations: 77 Va. 553
Docket Number: 
Parties: Avis and Wife v. Lee and als.
Judges: 
Reporter: Virginia Reports
Volume: 77
Pages: 553–568

Head Matter:
Richmond.
Avis and Wife v. Lee and als.
May 10th, 1883.
x. Fraudulent Conveyances—Ref erence to commissioner—Case at bar.— Suit in Virginia to set aside conveyance for fraud. Grantor and grantees deny fraud and explain the bona fides of the transaction. Depositions taken. Circuit court decrees conveyance fraudulent and null as to grantor’s creditors. Appeal to district court of appeals. Decree reversed and cause remanded for account of all dealings between grantor and grantees before executing deed, inspection of all grantees’ mercantile books, and examination of themselves on oath before commissioner. Grantees notify plaintiffs when and where in the city of B (their home), before commissioner of Virginia, they would submit their books for inspection and themselves for examination on oath. Then and there the books were inspected and grantees cross-examined on oath by counsel for plaintiffs. Commissioner made copies of the books, and certified the copies and grantees’ depositions to circuit court. These were laid before commissioner in Virginia. He refused to consider them, but made special statement. Circuit court, inspecting his report, decreed that plaintiffs had failed to make out their charge of fraud, and dismissed their bill with costs.
Held—(by a majority of the court):
1. The decree of the district court of appeals reversing the decree annulling the deed for fraud was final as far as it went.
2. Appellees might have appealed to this court, but did not.
3. In its directions for account of dealings, inspection of books and examination on oath of grantees, its purpose was to get at the truth; and the inspection and examination in the city of B answered for that purpose, as well as the like inspection and examination in Virginia could have done. And the circuit court needed not to compel the books and the grantees to be brought to this state for inspection and examination.
Held—(by Richardson J. and Lewis P.):
In pursuance of directions of district court of appeals, circuit court should have required not only the account of all dealings between grantor and grantees before execution of deed, and the inspection of all mercantile books of grantees, and the examination on oath of grantees themselves, to have been taken and made before its own commissioner in Virginia, but should also have required the commissioner to ascertain whether the deed was intended by the parties thereto to be an absolute conveyance, or only a mortgage.
Appeal from decree of circuit court of Lancaster county rendered 28tli January, 1875, in a chancery cause wherein James L. Avis and Sophia V. his wife, and others, were complainants, and William K. Lee and Mary A. his wife, Arthur H. Lee, Warren Eubank and William Henderson were home, and Henry Duvall and George L. Iglehart, merchants and partners trading in the name of Duvall 8s Iglehart, in the city of Baltimore, were absent defendants. The object of the suit was to vacate a conveyance made by Wm. K. Lee and wife, on 7th December, 1865, to Duvall 8s Iglehart, of all his land, stock and furniture in Lancaster county, Virginia, in consideration of $6,000, expressed on the face of the lease to have been paid, of all which property, however, grantor retained possession, under a parole lease, on the ground that the same was made with intent to defraud the plaintiffs and others who are creditors of said grantor.
By its last decree the circuit court dismissed the plaintiffs' hill with costs, and they obtained from one of the judges of this court an appeal.
The opinion states the facts and the proceedings sufficiently for the comprehension of the points decided.
R. T. L. Beale, and John S. Wise, for the appellants.
The court mistook the law as applicable to the facts of the record. The principle so long maintained in Virginia, that possession inconsistent with the terms of the deed was fraud per se, was modified in Davis v. Turner only to the extent of permit ting that rule of evidence to he met hy explanations showing bonafides. The onus probandi was thrown upon the defendants, and unless the proofs adduced show perfect good faith, the conclusion of fraud results as conclusively now as it did ever with such proofs prior to Davis v. Turner, 4th Graft. 422; Curd v. Miller’s Ex’or, 7th Gratt. 185.
The opportunity allowed Duval and Iglehart to do this by decree of appellate court, they failed to embrace. And apart from the answers, there is no explanation of the alleged indebtedness of Lee; on the contrary, much impugning the truth of its existence.
And secondly, independently of the principles of fraud per se, the court erred in dismissing the bill as not sustained by proofs. Every ear-mark of fraud actual, relied upon in the books, is present in this record. The insolvency of vendor, the secrecy of the negotiation, the sweeping character of the sale, including everything, even the bed Lee slept upon, the continued possession and actual sale of portions of the property conveyed by Lee and wife, the extreme improbability of a credit of $4,000 upon a single note accorded to one in Lee’s circumstances by a mercantile firm, and the utter failure to show for what this large sum was due.
It is submitted with some confidence that these facts do show a feigned sale, which requires something more than an answer denying fraud to be successfully repelled. Certain it is, that a former circuit court and a district appellate court so thought, as is shown by the record. See 1st Smith’s Lead. Cas.-—Twyne’s Case—for a review of authorities upon this whole subject.
W. W. Gordon, and Robert Mayo, for the appellees.

Opinion:
Lacy, J.,
delivered the opinion of the court.
On the 26th day of January, 1866, the appellant, Sophia V. Mitchell, since intermarried with the appellant, James L. Avis, filed her bill in the circuit court of Lancaster county, to set aside as fraudulent a deed from the appellee, William K. Lee and wife, to the appellees, Duval and Iglehart, which deed was made on the 7th day of December, 1865. The land sold under the said deed, having been leased by the vendee to the vendor. The depositions of seventeen witnesses were taken pro and core, and the circuit court decreed on the 5th day of November, 1867, the deed to be fraudulent, and ordered the land to be sold to pay the plaintiffs' debt. From this decree the defendants appealed to the district court of appeals at Fredericksburg, Virginia, a tribunal then existing under the laws of this state. On the 18th day of July, 1868, the district court of appeals reversed the circuit court, and remanded the cause. From this order reversing the circuit court, the plaintiffs were entitled to an appeal to this court as a matter of right, but no appeal was taken, and that decree, so far as it goes, is final in this cause. That court said the circuit court erred in decreeing that the fraud charged in the bill had been established by the evidence, and instead of doing so, ought to have directed a commissioner of the court to take an account of all the dealings between the vendor and vendees, before the execution of the deed complained of, and ascertain the amount due by the former to the latter, and inquire into and state all the circumstances connected with the execution of the said deed and the consideration thereof, &c.; and ought to have directed the vendees to produce before a commissioner, when required by him, all their mercantile books containing an'account of any of the said dealings, and submit to be examined, on oath by him. In pursuance of this decree of the said district court, the circuit court of Lancaster, on the 27th day of May, 1870, decreed accordingly.
The vendees gave notice to the plaintiffs that on the 1st day of November, 1870, at a place designated in the city of Baltimore (the place of their residence), they would exhibit all their books and accounts bearing on the subject before a commissioner of Virginia in the said city of Baltimore, and submit them selves to be examined, on oath. On the day named, and at the place designated, the said books were exhibited before the said commissioner, and the vendees did submit themselves to be examined on oath, and were cross-examined at length by counsel for some of the creditors of' the vendor in the deed complained of, and the said books were copied and certified by the said commissioner, the certificate declaring the copies to be accurate and full; and these copies and certified abstracts were laid before the commissioner of the circuit court of Lancaster. The said commissioner refused to consider the said certified copies, but made special statement of same, as required by the appellees. Upon the coming in of this report the circuit court, upon inspection of the same, decreed in favor of the defendant, declaring that the plaintiffs had entirely failed to make out the charge of fraud, and dismissed their bill. From this decree the appellants appealed to this court.
We are of opinion that the circuit court did not err in thus dismissing the plaintiff's bill.
Upon inspection of the books so copied, the transactions, running back for many years anterior to the beginning of the late war, appear to be usual, and such as might be reasonable and possible, and indeed probable, between the parties, and they are proved to be accurate and genuine.
The sole question in this case then, is, whether the circuit court should not have compelled the original books to be brought to this state for an inspection by its commissioner. How could this be at all necessary, or indeed, proper ? The books were all exhibited in the city of Baltimore before a commissioner of Virginia there, exhibited to the parties themselves and their counsel, and copied in full and certified, and the parties examined on oath and cross-examined. What more could have been done in this state than was done in that state ? What good could come on the one hand by bringing the original books, or what harm did come on the other hand by not bringing them ?
It is, however, contended that the district court so ordered. We do not so understand the decree of that court. The obvious intention and aim of the decree of that court was to get at the truth between the parties, upon an examination of the mercantile books of these vendees. These books have been examined, copied and certified, and exhibited to the court thus copied and certified, and to the parties and their counsel in the original; and it would have been altogether useless and fruitless to have demanded more. The circuit court did not err in so deciding, and we are of opinion to affirm the said decree of the circuit court.