Opinion ID: 1764244
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defendants' Claim for Breach of Warranty

Text: The evidence which was before the trial court on the motion for summary judgment indicated that a family cemetery existed on a plantation owned by Matthew Fenn, who died in 1885. Fenn's will stated: I desire that my body shall be decently buried at the graveyard on my plantation two miles east of Clayton in said County. It is my desire that one square acre of land including the graves of my former wife and children who have died, shall be set apart and forever dedicated to the purpose of a family graveyard with rights of way to and from same. There was no final disposition of the plantation under the will, so the property passed in undivided equal shares to Fenn's sixteen surviving children; eight the children of his first wife, Matilda, and eight the children of his second wife, Martha. The evidence further indicated that the shares belonging to the children of Matilda were conveyed by deed within the family until in 1922, those shares all belonged to Matthew Homer Fenn. None of these deeds showed a reservation of any kind for a family cemetery. The day after the trial court granted summary judgment defendants filed exhibits purporting to indicate that Matthew Homer Fenn owned the entire property in 1922. They claim that the failure of these deeds to recite a reservation resulted in a breach of general warranty or warranty for quiet enjoyment which passed to him as a subsequent grantee. Assuming defendants are right in claiming that the entire interest in the property was held by Matthew Homer Fenn in 1922, the defendants cannot prevail on this issue because they did not derive their title from Matthew Homer Fenn. The defendants do not claim their title by virtue of any conveyance from Matthew Homer Fenn or the heirs of Matthew Fenn. The defendants' chain of title is as follows. On February 11, 1927, the subject property was sold by foreclosure deed, without warranty, to E. E. Kennedy and wife. The Kennedys subsequently sold the property to W. N. Boyd and his wife Elina Boyd by warranty deed on January 2, 1950. At deposition, defendant Boyd testified, without elaboration, that he obtained title to the property from his father W. N. Boyd. But, the evidence is without dispute that the foreclosure proceedings and the auctioneer's deed given pursuant thereto, were all based on a mortgage which had been fully satisfied prior to foreclosure. A satisfied mortgage is void. As noted in Richardson v. Stephens, 122 Ala. 301 at 307, 25 So. 39 (1899): The mortgage being void conferred no rights upon the mortgagee or upon the appellant as the purchaser thereunder. Assuming, without deciding, that the mortgage purported to be foreclosed was properly given by the Fenn heirs, defendants obtained no claim of breach of general warranty or warranty for quiet enjoyment therefrom because a satisfied mortgage cannot possibly forge a valid link in the chain of title from the Fenns to the Boyds. For this reason, we affirm the trial court's judgment disallowing defendants' breach of warranty claim. We are aware that the trial court denied defendants' claim on another basis, but if the trial court reaches the correct result, it is immaterial that the wrong reason may have been given. Bank of the Southeast v. Koslin, 380 So.2d 826 (Ala.1980).