Opinion ID: 1357886
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Was this before or after December 11, 1941?

Text: 8. The delivery of a deed which has been knowingly executed with the intention of transferring title completes the transaction so far as title is concerned and vests the title in the grantee. 7 Thompson, Real Property perm ed, 555 et seq., § 4110. That there was an acceptance of delivery of the Schmidt deeds by the Binghams is made evident by their reliance upon these deeds as delivered as the very basis for their suit of 1943. This acceptance related back to the date of the deeds' delivery. 26 CJS, Deeds, 254, 256, § 51; 1 Am Jur, Deeds, 621, § 324. 9. The delivery of a deed is completed when the grantor has put it beyond his power to reclaim. Jobse v. U.S. Nat. Bank, 142 Or 692, 696, 21 P2d 221; Norton v. Norton, 105 Or 651, 654, 209 P 1048; Dieckman v. Jaeger, 87 Or 392, 394, 170 P 727; Pierson v. Fisher, 48 Or 223, 233, 85 P 621; 26 CJS, Deeds, 237, § 42; 16 Am Jur, Deeds, 508, § 125; 7 Thompson, Real Property perm ed, 623, § 4160. It can be accomplished by deposit in the mails, directed to the grantee. 26 CJS, Deeds, 237, § 42; 16 Am Jur, Deeds, 508, § 125. The date of delivery thus being controlling, we press our inquiry to ascertain from the record here, if possible, when that delivery became such a consummated fact as to render the Bingham-Schmidt contract to purchase and sell an executed agreement. We again revert to the complaint in the 1943 suit. It is not necessary to the solution of the problem before us that we fix the precise date upon which the delivery of the deeds by the Schmidt heirs was accomplished. Our prime interest is whether or not the statute of limitations (§ 1-202, OCLA) then operating in favor of the defendant Weber had been tolled by the provisions of § 1-217, OCLA, prior to the delivery of the Schmidt deeds to the Binghams. If delivery was made prior to December 11, 1941, the date of the declaration of war against Germany, then it is obvious that the operation of the statute of limitations continued uninterrupted and without repose, and no advantage thereby accrued to the Binghams which they can successfully assert in this partition suit to overcome the defendant Weber's claim of title to the whole parcel by reason of adverse possession. Before proceeding further, we note the statement of the Binghams found in Paragraph VI of their complaint in the suit of 1943. They there allege that on March 3, 1941, they made payment of the purchase price. It then follows that from March 3, 1941, to December 11, 1941, the Schmidt heirs had a period of but a few days longer than nine months in which to complete legally their part of the sales bargain by making delivery of their deeds. We are of the opinion that the only reasonable construction that can be accorded to Paragraph VII of the Bingham complaint hereinbefore quoted is: The deeds were deposited in the post office in Germany prior to December 11, 1941, though possibly close to that date. It is not there alleged that war preceded the act of delivery of title by depositing in the mail but, to the contrary, the allegation is that after the act of legal delivery had been completed, war intervened to interrupt the mechanics of a completed transmission of the deeds to the Binghams in the United States, an intervention of such character that it resulted in the loss or destruction of the deeds legally mailed. This loss, of course, might have happened within or without Germany at any time after the deeds were mailed. There are several things in the record which give cogent warranty for the foregoing conclusion concerning Paragraph VII. Aside from what is said in that paragraph regarding the subject of delivery, plaintiffs in Paragraph VIII make a forthright and unequivocal allegation that delivery of the deeds was an accomplished fact which vested in them an undivided seven-eights [sic] interest in and to the real property. Not only do the plaintiffs there assert ownership as a result of such delivery but their very assertion gives rise to the presumption that the delivery upon which their claim of title rests was a legal delivery, that is, one not proscribed by any law, particularly legislation in force by reason of the war which from December 11, 1941, subsisted between the United States and Germany. Indeed, the lower court would have been powerless to have rendered the relief requested and granted in the suit of 1943 had there been no delivery of deeds from the German heirs. There would have been no lost deeds to restore or establish nor any right in the Binghams to have claimed title to the premises based thereon. Unless there had been a legal delivery, as the court in that suit must have found, there would have been no justification for directing that the decree in the 1943 suit should stand in lieu of the lost deeds. Moreover, had the delivery contravened any law in force at the time of the actual delivery which operated against the defendants taking title, then the court would have been equally impotent in rendering the decree which it did, and it would be valueless to plaintiffs in their attempt to establish in the instant matter any species of ownership or right adverse to the possession claimed by the defendant Weber in this case. 10. In their brief, the plaintiffs state a new and different position entirely at variance with the allegations of their complaint in the suit of 1943 for the re-establishment of their lost deeds and one definitely at odds with their reliance here upon the decree obtained in that suit. In their reply brief, we find this statement:    We do not dispute that from the record it is plain that the deal which he [Robert G. Clostermann] negotiated was acceptable to the heirs and that they executed and attempted to deliver deeds, but, the attempt to deliver was inneffective [sic] because of the interposition of a state of war. Up to the point of actual consumation [sic] of the transaction, all was legal. At that point under the law of nations the completion of the contract became illegal on the part of the German heirs.   .    The deeds were not delivered and the consideration did not pass until the vesting order of the Alien Property Custodian. Being illegal, an attempt to deliver was wholly ineffective.   . (Italics ours.) This is an attempt to impeach and contradict the very decree upon which they rely, a species of attack which cannot be properly made in this suit. In support of this assertion of illegality, they rally the Trading with the Enemy Act (Tit 50 App USCA). That Act did not become effective as a bar to any transaction between the Binghams and the German heirs of Schmidt because of war until midnight on December 11, 1941 (Tit 50 App USCA, § 2), a time which, as disclosed by their own pleading, must have been subsequent to the delivery of the Schmidt deeds. Being so, reference to the Trading with the Enemy Act is of no help to their cause in this appeal. We also think it is not without significance that the Alien Property Custodian, who properly entered an appearance in behalf of the German heirs, did not take any steps to vest the alleged interest of the German heirs in the land in controversy but, instead, issued as his only vesting order one against the fund representing the purchase price paid by the Binghams to Robert G. Clostermann, the Schmidts' resident attorney in fact, a fund which the German heirs would not have been entitled to receive in the absence of a delivery of their deeds conveying their interest in the property. 11. We, therefore, hold that such interest as those heirs of Joseph Schmidt, deceased, who were parties defendant in the suit of 1943, had in the property here involved was transferred to the Binghams, plaintiffs herein, on some date subsequent to March 3, 1941, and prior to the declaration of war on December 11, 1941, and that the statute of limitations (§ 1-202, OCLA) had not been tolled by § 1-217 prior to the time that the Binghams acquired such interest as the Schmidt heirs may have had therein. In the earlier part of this opinion, we stated that unless interrupted by the tolling of the statute, the possession of the property by Mrs. Weber and her predecessors would ripen into a title by adverse possession on March 23, 1945. The first and only claim of the plaintiffs asserted adversely to the defendant Weber was made by the filing of their complaint in the partition suit at bar. That, as we have noted, was on December 21, 1945, and, therefore, too late to be of avail in this matter. 12. The only other matter compelling attention is appellants' claim that the Webers during the period of adverse possession made certain statements giving recognition to the title alleged to have been vested in the heirs of Joseph Schmidt and thereby created, they argue, a fatal interruption of the continuity of their adverse possession. Our examination of the entire record warrants the conclusion that this proposition of plaintiffs is without merit. AFFIRMED.