Court Opinion

ID: 88202
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2010-04-28 16:01:33+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:32.429738
License: Public Domain

76 U.S. 617 (____)
9 Wall. 617
IRVINE
v.
IRVINE.
Supreme Court of United States.

*624 Mr. Allis, for the plaintiff in error.
No opposing counsel.
*625 Mr. Justice STRONG delivered the opinion of the court.
Though the exceptions found in this record are numerous, the questions which they present are few. If the answers given to the requests of the plaintiff for instructions to the jury were correct, it is certain that the objections made by him to the admission of evidence were unfounded. Those objections were all based upon the assumption that the evidence offered was immaterial and irrelevant to the issue. Whether the assumption was well grounded will be seen when we consider the law of the case as expounded in the charge to the jury.
The plaintiff submitted twelve propositions, which he asked should be given to the jury as instructions. The first was in substance that the deed of May 8th, 1849, from the plaintiff to the defendant, did not pass the estate acquired by the plaintiff under the patent from the United States made subsequently, to wit, on the 8th of October, A.D. 1849, and that it would not have passed the estate had the plaintiff attained his majority before the deed was made. It is a general rule, that when one makes a deed of land, covenanting therein that he is the owner, and subsequently acquires an outstanding and adverse title, his new acquisition enures to the benefit of his grantee, on the principle of estoppel. As the deed of the plaintiff in this case contained an assertion that he was well seized in fee, and had good right to sell and convey in fee, it would not be difficult, were it necessary, to show that in taking the patent he was in law acting for his grantee. But it is not necessary to rely upon that principle. The evidence in the case was, that prior to his deed to the defendant, to wit, on the 21st of February, 1849, he had bought the land from the government, and had paid all the purchase-money. The patent subsequently given to him *626 was, therefore, not a new acquisition of title. It was only a confirmation of the right which he had acquired before the deed was made.
But it is argued, on behalf of the plaintiff, that the deed was inoperative, because it was forbidden by the 12th section of the act of Congress of September 4th, 1841, which granted pre-emption rights, and enacted that any grant or conveyance made before the entry of the land shall be null and void, except in the hands of bonâ fide purchasers for a valuable consideration. To this it may be answered, that neither that act nor the acts of May 29th, 1830, and January 23d, 1832, have any application to the present case. They relate to pre-emptive rights conferred upon actual settlers. The plaintiff did not enter the land in dispute under either of these, and no act of Congress deprived him of the power to sell and convey after he had made an entry and paid all the purchase-money, though before he had received his patent. The court could not then have affirmed the proposition which the plaintiff submitted.
His second point was that the deed was void because made by the plaintiff during his minority. This the court refused to affirm. Whatever may have been the doubts once entertained, it has long been settled that the deed of an infant, being an executed contract, is only voidable at his election; that it is not void. It operates to transmit the title. And there are some cases, of which the present, in one aspect of it, may possibly have been one, in which such a deed is held to be not even voidable. They are those in which the infant, by making the conveyance, does only what the law would have compelled him to do.[*] Whether this was such a deed need not be considered, for conceding that it was not, clearly it was not void.
The third proposition of the plaintiff does not appear in the record.
The fourth and fifth were affirmed, and the sixth was answered correctly.
*627 The minority of the plaintiff at the time when he made his deed to the defendant was an admitted fact, and this suit was an attempt to avoid the deed. The evidence disclosed nothing that could amount to an avoidance of the deed before the suit was brought; nothing which the law recognizes as an act of avoidance. The struggle at the trial was over the question, whether the plaintiff had not confirmed the deed after he came of age? He contended, and he asked the court so to instruct the jury, that an act of affirmance must be of as solemn a character as the deed itself. This instruction the court declined in terms, stating, however, that mere acquiescence, however long, if short of the statutory period of limitations, is not sufficient, and that an act of confirmation, if not equally solemn with the deed, must be of such a solemn and undoubted nature, of such a clear and unequivocal character, as to establish a clear intention to confirm the deed after a full knowledge that it was voidable. Certainly this was all that the plaintiff had a right to demand. There is a well-recognized distinction between the nature of those acts which are necessary to avoid an infant's deed, and the character of those that are sufficient to confirm it. The authorities frequently assert that such a deed cannot be avoided except by some act equally solemn with the deed itself. Some assert that it cannot be done by anything short of an entry; and this whether the deed operates by livery of seisin, or transmits the title by virtue of the statute of uses. Others hold that it may be avoided, without a previous entry, by another deed made to a different grantee. But all the authorities recognize the doctrine, that acts which would be insufficient to avoid such a deed may amount to an affirmance of it. While generally it has been held that mere acquiescence, though long continued, will not suffice; yet even that, in connection with other circumstances, may establish a ratification.[*] And, where an infant had sold land, and *628 after coming of age saw the purchaser making large expenditures in valuable improvements upon the land sold, and said nothing in disaffirmance for four years (facts very like those appearing in this case), it was held that the circumstances were not such as to excuse this long silence, and there being evidence that after he had reached twenty-one years of age he had said that he had sold the land, had been paid for it, and was satisfied, and had authorized an offer to purchase it, it was ruled, as a legal conclusion, that he had confirmed his deed.[*] So in Wallace's Lessee v. Servis,[] it was adjudged that an infant's acquiescence in his deed for four years after he came of age, in view of extensive improvements made upon the property, amounted to a confirmation.
There is reason for this distinction between the effect of acts in avoidance and that of acts of confirmation. We have seen that an infant's deed is not void; it passes the title of the land to his grantee. Now, if the deed be avoided the ownership of the land is retransferred. The seisin is changed. There is fitness in a rule that title to land shall not pass by acts less solemn than a deed; that its ownership shall not be divested by anything inferior to that which conferred it. On the other hand a confirmation passes no title; it effects no change of property; it disturbs no seisin. It is therefore itself an act of a character less solemn than is the act of avoiding a deed, and it may well be effected in a less formal manner.
By the seventh proposition the court was asked to instruct the jury that there was no evidence of any confirmation of the deed by the plaintiff after he came of age, and that the evidence showed no affirmance. Whether the evidence showed an affirmance or not was a question for the jury and not for the court, if there was any tending to show it; and that there was is beyond doubt. Had there been nothing more than the lease of a part of the land conveyed, a lease made by the defendant to the plaintiff, with others, on the *629 8th of May, 1854, it would have been impossible for the court to have withheld from the jury the inquiry whether the plaintiff had not confirmed his deed, or to have declared there was no evidence of confirmation. True the lease was not for the particular parts of the land conveyed by the deed which are the subjects of the present suit, but it was still very significant. The defendant held the part demised by the same title by which he claims the lots now in dispute, to wit, under the plaintiff's deed. He held by no other right. If the deed was effective to assure to him the premises demised, it was equally so to protect him in the ownership of the lots, for it conveyed the whole property, the lots and the demised premises. When, therefore, the plaintiff signed and sealed the lease, he acknowledged by a solemn act that the defendant rightfully held under the deed. It might well have been inferred from this that he intended to assent to the conveyance he had made. There was other evidence of ratification, but this suffices to show that the plaintiff's proposition was inadmissible.
The eighth and tenth points relate to some evidence that had been given, tending to show an employment of the plaintiff by the defendant to enter the land for him, and that the plaintiff paid for it with the defendant's money, furnished to him for that purpose. The court was asked to instruct the jury that no trust or agency had been shown which could have been enforced. We do not perceive how the court could rightfully have affirmed what was asked. An infant may undoubtedly be a trustee, and be compelled to execute his trust. Especially, if after he came of age, he affirms the trust, and ratifies the acts which he did in accordance with the trust, will it be out of his power to deny that any trust ever existed. But we need not discuss this subject; it is of small importance to the case. It is enough that, in our opinion, it was not for the court to deny that there had been a resulting trust, and had they denied it the plaintiff would have gained nothing. The controlling question, the one submitted to the jury, was whether he had conveyed his interest, whatever it might have been, to the defendant, *630 and whether he had confirmed his conveyance after he attained his majority.
The ninth request for instruction presented an abstract question not raised by anything in the case. The court did well to decline answering it. Certainly it should not have been affirmed.
The eleventh proposition was affirmed, and the twelfth was correctly answered, as we have shown in our remarks upon the seventh.
We have thus reviewed the entire record and have found no error. If anything has been left unnoticed it is because we consider it unimportant. The plaintiff has himself well summed up the case by stating that there are but two questions presented by it: "First, was the deed of May 8th, 1849, void by reason of its contravening the act of Congress of September 4th, 1841, or ineffectual to pass the subsequently acquired title and estate of the plaintiff under the patent of October 8th, 1849? Second, if the deed was merely voidable by reason of the infancy of the grantor, did he, after he came of age, affirm it?" The first we have answered in the negative, and the second was properly submitted to the jury.
The judgment of the Circuit Court is
AFFIRMED, WITH COSTS.
NOTES
[*]  See Zouch v. Parsons, 3 Burrow, 1794.
[*]  Cresinger v. The Lessee of Welch, 15 Ohio, 193; Drake v. Ramsey, 5 Ohio, 251; Ferguson v. Bell, 17 Missouri, 347; Bostwick v. Atkins, 3 Comstock, 53.
[*]  Wheaton v. East, 5 Yerger, 41-62.
[]  4 Harrington, 75; see also Hartman v. Kendall, 4 Indiana, 405.