Opinion ID: 2630648
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: validity of the easement

Text: ¶ 13 Arnold attacks the validity of both the January 1982 warranty deed which purported to create the easement and the January 1991 corrective warranty deed which purported to limit the easement and corrected the legal description. We will address each deed in turn.

¶ 14 Arnold contends that the January 27, 1982, warranty deed was void for want of a grantor because when the deed was executed by the Western Management general partners on behalf of Western Management, Western Management held no ownership interest in the Arnold Property and could not grant an easement over it. Nine months later, however, on October 29, 1982, the general partners who then held title quitclaimed their interest in the Arnold Property to Western Management. ¶ 15 Section 57-1-10 of the Utah Code provides: If any person shall hereafter convey any real estate by conveyance purporting to convey the same in fee simple absolute, and shall not at the time of such conveyance have the legal estate in such real estate, but shall afterwards acquire the same, the legal estate subsequently acquired shall immediately pass to the grantee, his heirs, successors, assigns, and such conveyance shall be as valid as if such legal estate had been in the grantor at the time of the conveyance. Utah Code Ann. § 57-1-10 (2000); [2] see also Barlow Soc'y v. Commercial Sec. Bank, 723 P.2d 398, 400 (Utah 1986) (per curiam) (acknowledging that under section 57-1-10 a warranty deed is effective to convey after-acquired title). ¶ 16 Thus, a conveyance made by a grantor not holding fee title to property is binding when the grantor later obtains fee title. The statute has codified in part the equitable doctrine of estoppel by deed, sometimes referred to as the doctrine of after-acquired title. Love asserts that under that doctrine and the statute, the grant of an easement to Lowenberg by the partners on behalf of Western Management in January 1982 was binding upon Western Management when it obtained title nine months later, thereby validating the grant. In Hall v. Fitzgerald, 671 P.2d 224 (Utah 1983), this court explained: The use of the warranty deed in this case not only assured conveyance of all the vendors' current interest, but would also automatically transfer to the grantees or their successors any legal estate subsequently acquired. Such is the effect of our statute, as well as the related doctrine of estoppel by deed. Id. at 228 (citations omitted). Arnold insists that section 57-1-10 was ineffective to transfer an easement to the grantee Lowenberg through after-acquired title since the statutory language is limited to a legal estate and an easement is not an estate but rather a servitude. See Hayes v. Gibbs, 110 Utah 54, 63-64, 169 P.2d 781, 786 (1946) (defining an easement as a servitude rather than an interest in land). ¶ 17 In Noronha v. Stewart, 199 Cal. App.3d 485, 245 Cal.Rptr. 94 (1988), the court was presented with a similar issue. There the defendants were desirous of building a wall that encroached on an adjoining lot. Id. at 95. The apparent owner of the adjoining lot, one Jett, gave his oral permission and invited the defendants to come to his office to obtain a written easement. Id. However, no written easement was given and, in fact, Jett was not the legal owner of the lot when he gave oral permission for the wall, but under contract was entitled to the lot after a house was built on the property. Id. After the wall was constructed, Jett obtained legal title to the lot but held the lot only five days before selling it to the plaintiffs. Id. Later, the plaintiffs demanded that the defendants remove the encroaching wall. Id. ¶ 18 The court recognized that California's statute on after-acquired title, like Utah's, was limited to conveyances of fee simple and was not applicable to the case then at hand. Id. at 96. But the court held that the common law rule, however, survived the enactment of the statute and is considerably broader and covered the oral license granted to the defendants to build the wall. Id. (citation omitted). Consequently, once Jett became the owner of the lot, he and his successors were estopped from contesting the passage of the easement to the defendant. Id. We agree with the reasoning of that case but only as it supports validation of a written attempt to grant an easement. We therefore extend recognition of the doctrine of estoppel by deed to cover the written easement attempted to be granted in the instant case. To allow a grantor to deny the terms of its conveyance after acquiring title by repudiating an easement originally intended to be granted would be an invitation to fraud and would contravene the central purpose of the equitable doctrine of estoppel by deed.
¶ 19 Arnold contends that Love cannot establish the reasonable reliance necessary to invoke estoppel by deed because all of the defects in the purported grant of easement were a matter of public record and therefore Love could not reasonably rely on the existence of the easement. In so doing, Arnold concedes, however unwittingly, that any nominally diligent investigator, including itself, could have discovered all of the relevant deeds. As discussed below, both the defects and the correction were a matter of public record and accessible to Arnold as well as to Love. Furthermore, the relevant party in 1982 was not Love, but Love's predecessor in interest, Lowenberg. Lowenberg reasonably relied on the validity of the 1982 grant of the easement by continuing to use the right-of-way, both before and after the partners quitclaimed their interest in the Arnold Property to Western Management.
¶ 20 Arnold further argues that counter estoppel is triggered by the 1984 warranty deed reciting that grantor Western Management Convey[s] and Warrant[s] against all claims by through or under to grantee Smith, Halander, Smith and Associates with no reference to the easement. However, Arnold cannot establish in the grantee the reasonable reliance necessary to counter estoppel because the natural persons constituting Smith, Halander, Smith and Associates were also partners of Western Management. The Smith, Halander, Smith and Associates partners could not and did not assert that they relied on Western Management's conveyance of the property free of easement. They indisputably had notice of the easement that they had granted on behalf of Western Management in the January 1982 warranty deed and that Lowenberg continued to use.
¶ 21 Finally, Arnold points to the incorrect legal description of the easement in the January 1982 warranty deed, which describes no part of the Arnold Property. This problem, however, was cured by the 1991 corrective warranty deed which was executed and recorded before Arnold took title. A corrective deed relates back to the time of the original conveyance. The doctrine of relation back permits a party to a conveyance of real property to correct an erroneous legal description in the original deed by filing a subsequent or `correction' deed; the correction then becomes effective as of the date of the original deed. Sartain v. Fid. Fin. Servs., Inc., 116 Idaho 269, 775 P.2d 161, 164 (Ct.App.1989); see also infra ¶ 23 & ¶ 26.
¶ 22 Arnold attacks the validity of the January 1991 corrective warranty deed on the bases that (a) the deed was signed by Smith, Smith, Minson, and Halander as General Partners of Western Management when, in fact, they were record owners of the Arnold Property individually; (b) the deed contains no language of conveyance; and (c) a corrective deed cannot affect the interests of third parties. We address these points in turn.
¶ 23 The corrective warranty deed states: WHEREAS, Western Management, formerly a general partnership consisting of H. Fred Smith, Ronald W. Smith, Dale M. Minson, and Robert S. Halander; and Smith, Halander, Smith and Associates, a partnership, consisting of H. Fred Smith, Ronald W. Smith and Robert S. Halander (successor in interest to a portion of the property described in the amended legal description which is presently titled in the name of Smith, Halander, Smith and Associates) herein collectively are acting as grantors of their respective interests. A corrective warranty deed, in order to be effective, must be executed by the same grantor that executed the original warranty deed. [A] mistake in the description of the land conveyed may be corrected by a subsequent deed executed by the same grantor for the purpose of correcting the description and confirming in the grantee the title to the land intended to have been described in the prior deed[.] 23 Am.Jur.2d Deeds § 333 (1983). The former Western Management partners complied with this requirement, executing the deed on behalf of Western Management, as they had in the January 1982 warranty deed. Thus, the 1991 deed was executed by the same grantor as the January 1982 deed. Additionally, because the deed was signed by each member of the former partnership, each member effectively conveyed his individual interest in the property. Section 48-1-7 of the Utah Code provides in part that [w]here the title to real property is in the names of all the partners a conveyance executed by all the partners passes all their rights in such property. Utah Code Ann. § 48-1-7 (2002). [3] Although Arnold asserts that the members executed the deed only on behalf of their former partnership and did not convey their individual interests therein, such an interpretation of the deed would render the deed ineffective to accomplish its objective, which was to validate the easement which the parties had previously attempted to create and to correct the legal description of the easement. We will not presume that the members intended to perform a useless act but will construe the deed to give effect to the parties' intentions. See 26A C.J.S. Deeds § 170 (2001) (stating that an instrument intended to operate as a deed should be so contructed as to give it force and effect and to render it valid where possible).
¶ 24 Arnold argues that the 1991 corrective warranty deed was ineffective to grant an easement because the deed lacks the necessary statutory language to effectuate a conveyance in 1991. This argument, however, fails to apprehend the function of a corrective or confirmation deed. 23 Am. Jur.2d Deeds § 11 (2002), under the heading Confirmation deed, states that [t]he purpose of a correction deed is to admit mutual error and change the original instrument to conform to the true intent of the parties. A mistake in the omission of parties may be corrected by a deed of correction to effectuate the intention of the parties. The 1983 edition of 23 Am.Jur.2d provides a more complete explanation of the manner in which a deed and a corrective deed operate together as one valid conveyance. A deed of confirmation may be appropriately utilized in order to remove doubts as to the operativeness of a prior deed to convey title to the land intended.... [T]he two deeds, taken together, will operate to pass the title to the grantee named therein. The correction deed need not restate all material portions of the deed being corrected if such portions contain no errors. 23 Am.Jur.2d Deeds § 333 (1983). ¶ 25 Therefore, because the 1982 warranty deed and the 1991 corrective warranty deed functioned together, according to the intention of the grantors, to validly create and convey a right-of-way over the Arnold Property for the benefit of the Love Property, the language of conveyance in the 1982 warranty deed was sufficient for both.
¶ 26 Arnold objects that a corrective warranty deed cannot impact the interests of third parties. In the instant case, however, whatever had transpired in the interim, the same persons executed the 1982 warranty deed and the 1991 corrective warranty deed. Lowenberg, the grantee in 1982, still owned the property benefitted by the easement. Thus, as of January 1991, there were no third parties of record with an interest in either property whose rights could intervene. The fact that the Arnold Property may have been conveyed away from Western Management or its partners and then conveyed back between 1982 and 1991 is irrelevant where none of the intervening fee holders could claim a current interest in the property, or point to any way in which the 1991 corrective warranty deed altered their interests. ¶ 27 The four partners could not, and did not, claim that the 1991 corrective warranty deed compromised their rights in the Arnold Property. Consequently, Arnold's arguments on property ownership in a partnership, entity theory, and agency law are irrelevant in this context, and the 1982 warranty deed and the 1991 corrective warranty deed, acting together, operated to create a valid easement for a right-of-way burdening the Arnold Property for the benefit of the Love Property.