Court Opinion

ID: 9593061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:19:11.81475+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:14:39.216784
License: Public Domain

Justice MARTIN
dissenting.
I agree with the majority opinion that the alleged contract in this case is void under the statute of frauds. N.C.G.S. § 22-2 (1986). However, I cannot agree with the majority that the plaintiff in this case must be estopped from “taking advantage of this fault.”1 Brooks v. Hackney, 329 N.C. 166, 404 S.E.2d 854 (1991).
*175There is no issue in this case concerning estoppel by deed. See generally 5 Strong’s N.C. Index 3d Estoppel § 1 (1977). There is no deed directly involved in this case. Nor does the majority appear to analyze the case in terms of promissory estoppel. See generally Feinman, Promissory Estoppel and Judicial Method, 97 Harv. L. Rev. 678 (1984).
The majority’s reliance upon the estoppel theory applied in Advertising, Inc. v. Harper, 7 N.C. App. 501, 172 S.E.2d 793 (1970), is misplaced. Advertising involved a situation where plaintiff’s assignor, Capital Sign Service, Inc., and defendant entered into a lease for a term of nine years of two highway signs. With approval of defendant, Capital constructed and erected the highway signs, defendant paid seven' months rent to plaintiff under the terms of the lease, “and [defendant] received benefits from the signs,” even after he unilaterally stopped paying rent. Id. at 503-05, 172 S.E.2d at 794-95. When defendant stopped paying rent, plaintiff sued to recover damages for breach of the lease agreement. One of defendant’s defenses was that the lease agreement was void because “the description of [the] personal property and the land upon which it purports to be located is so vague, uncertain and indefinite as to be not susceptible of identification. . . .” Id. at 500, 172 S.E.2d at 794. The Court of Appeals held:
The contract has been fully and wholly executed by the lessor by constructing and erecting the highway signs according to the terms of the lease and the defendant, having accepted the benefit of these signs, will not now be heard to repudiate the validity of the lease for any uncertainty in the description of the premises.
Id. at 505, 172 S.E.2d at 795.
In the instant case, defendants, the vendors, have not executed the land sales contract by delivering a deed to plaintiff, and thus *176plaintiff has received no benefit from the contract in that sense. In addition, while the record shows without contradiction that plaintiff paid $50 per month rent for a house on the northern part of the 113-acre tract, it is undisputed that this was a separate transaction unconnected with the purchase and sale of the twenty-five acre area at issue in this case. Further, although defendants allege that the “plaintiff used the land as he saw fit for the purpose of raising hogs, cutting firewood, and mowing hay,” defendant Margaret Hackney herself testified that the field plaintiff mowed hay from was not within “the” twenty-five acres, and that she “gave” him use of the field. She further testified that she and her husband, the male defendant, also mowed hay from portions of the entire tract, including a large field they now contend was part of “the” twenty-five acres. The defendants also took wood (cedar posts) from portions of the entire tract. Plaintiff testified that he never kept hogs in any of the area now contended by the defendants as being “the” twenty-five acres.
Thus, the record does not unequivocally show that plaintiff ever used the area containing the alleged twenty-five acres in any exclusive manner, nor does it show that defendants considered any particular location to have been so dedicated for sale to plaintiff that defendants could not freely reap its benefits for their own use. This situation is a far cry from that in Advertising, where the landlord whose estoppel theory prevailed had constructed and erected highway signs for the benefit of defendant on an obviously designated piece of property. The “benefits” which plaintiff gleaned in the instant case, when weighed against his steady monthly payments to defendants ultimately in the amount of $50,700, are negligible. They do not support a conclusion that plaintiff should be estopped from recovering payments he made under a contract which this Court has declared void.
One might also consider whether the doctrine of equitable estoppel might apply to the instant facts. It does not. Equitable estoppel “arises when anyone, by his acts, representations, or admissions, or by his silence when he ought to speak out, intentionally or through culpable negligence induces another to believe certain facts to exist, and such other rightfully relies and acts on such belief, so that he will be prejudiced if the former is permitted to deny the existence of such facts.” Transit, Inc. v. Casualty Co., 285 N.C. 541, 548, 206 S.E.2d 155, 159-60 (1974) (emphasis in original, quoting from Boddie v. Bond, 154 N.C. 359, 70 S.E. 824 (1911)). *177In the instant case the party sought to be estopped, that is, the plaintiff, did not induce defendants to believe that any facts existed that did not actually exist. In the absence of any culpable behavior of the plaintiff, it is inappropriate to hold that plaintiff is estopped from denying the enforceability of a contract which is admittedly void under the statute of frauds. Cf. Wachovia Bank v. Ruhish, 306 N.C. 417, 427, 293 S.E.2d 749, 756 (1982) (“proof of actual misrepresentation is essential” for equitable estoppel.).
As this Court has explained,
[i]n determining whether the doctrine of estoppel applies in any given situation, the conduct of both parties must be weighed in the balances of equity and the party claiming the estoppel no less than the party sought to be estopped must conform to fixed standards of equity. As to these, the essential elements of an equitable estoppel as related to the party estopped are:
[¶] (1) Conduct which amounts to a false representation or concealment of material facts, or, at least, which is reasonably calculated to convey the impression that the facts are otherwise than, and inconsistent with, those which the party afterwards attempts to assert;
(2) intention or expectation that such conduct shall be acted upon by the other party, or conduct which at least is calculated to induce a reasonably prudent person to believe such conduct was intended or expected to be relied and acted upon;
(3) knowledge, actual or constructive, of the real facts.
[¶] As related to the party claiming the estoppel they are:
(1) lack of knowledge and the means of knowledge of the truth as to the facts in question;
(2) reliance upon the conduct of the party sought to be estopped; and
(3) action based thereon of such a character as to change his position prejudicially.
Transit, Inc. v. Casualty Co., 285 N.C. at 549, 206 S.E.2d at 160 (citations omitted). The party claiming the estoppel must present evidence of these latter three elements in order to prevail under an estoppel theory. Id. In the instant case there is no evidence *178whatsoever that plaintiff falsely represented to or concealed anything from the defendants. A fortiori there was also no evidence of plaintiffs intent to conceal anything. There is no evidence that the plaintiff had “knowledge, actual or constructive, of the real facts.” Both plaintiff and defendants were aware of the problem with the description. There was no possible concealment on the part of any party with respect to this. Further, there is no evidence that the fact that the memorandum is void under the statute of frauds was either known by the plaintiff or concealed from the defendants prior to the Court of Appeals’ holding below in this case. See Brooks v. Hackney, 100 N.C. App. 562, 397 S.E.2d 361 (1990).
. Perhaps the majority is assuming that the defendants’ reliance upon the validity of the contract is the basis for the estoppel. However, plaintiff did not conceal its lack of validity from the defendants. In fact, plaintiff himself believed that the contract was valid, and continued to make payments due thereunder. The fact that the contract was later declared void under the statute of frauds in no way can be used by the defendants to support an assertion that the plaintiff was misleading them by claiming that the contract was valid. Finally, again, there is no evidence in the record that the conduct of the plaintiff in concealing a material fact resulted in the defendants changing their position prejudicially. Defendants still have their land, which, according to defendants, has increased in value. If anything, it was the plaintiff whose position was changed prejudicially since he paid more than $50,000 to the defendants who conveyed nothing in return.
The majority’s recitation of plaintiff’s use of the land in the vicinity of an area where the alleged twenty-five acres might be carved out, again, is not supported by the record. Further, the majority’s statement that defendants “would reasonably have believed that they were precluded from selling or renting the property to someone else” is also not supported by any of the pleadings or evidence of record in this case. Defendants in no way alleged or proved that they believed that they were precluded from selling or renting “the property” — whatever this indescribable tract was — to someone else. The record does show that they used this tract while plaintiff was making payments under the now-void contract. Defendants have further failed to show that they are materially prejudiced from receiving $50,700 from plaintiff and failing to deed him anything in exchange. If anything, in this case the equities run towards the plaintiff. Plaintiff in good faith made monthly *179payments to defendants for some eight years, believing he would receive in exchange a valuable tract of land in Chatham County. Defendants refused to cooperate in ascertaining the location of this property, and plaintiff thereupon changed his position by buying and moving to another tract of land at a time when his wife was expecting a child.
Plaintiff cannot and should not be held to be equitably estopped from denying the validity of an admittedly void contract for the conveyance of real property in this case.2 The contract is void, and the parties should be restored to the position in which they were before the memoranda were written. Plaintiff should receive back from the defendants his $50,700 plus interest and the defendants permitted to keep this land which, they admit, has increased in value since both the date of the contract and the date the suit was filed.
Finally, the disposition rendered by the majority opinion is enigmatic. The majority reverses the Court of Appeals’ decision which held that the contract is void, and then remands the case ultimately to the trial court. The trial court had held that summary judgment was appropriate for defendants on the statute of frauds question, that is, it held that the contract was not void under the statute of frauds and that plaintiff could proceed “to seek enforcement of the contract” — a remedy not sought by the plaintiff in his pleadings. The majority opinion therefore is holding that although the contract is void the plaintiff may attempt to enforce the contract. As we have seen in the litigation of this case, and as the majority also recognizes however, the contract is not en*180forceable because the description is inadequate for the drawing of a deed. To this mercurial result, I cannot concur.
Therefore, I dissent from the decision of the majority and vote to affirm the decision of the Court of Appeals.

. The majority’s characterization of the alleged contract’s voidness under the statute of frauds as a “fault” (evidently attributable to plaintiff) appears to stem from the fact that plaintiff handwrote the memoranda himself, and thus if anyone is to be blamed for the poor description, it should be plaintiff. However, when asked where the descriptions in the memoranda of 17 February 1979 came from, plaintiff testified that they were from a deed in defendants' chain of title:
*175Q. Did anyone dictate those descriptions to you?
A. I took them from the description of the property which they [the defendants] had a copy of — of the land formerly belonging to Luther Perrett.
Q. Was that from the entire deed of the larger tract from which this twenty-five acres was being taken out?
A. That was off of that deed.
Thus, the “fault,” if any, may be equally borne by defendants.

. The majority’s approach, as evidenced by its footnote, is a thinly veiled attempt under the guise of “quasi-estoppel” to allow the doctrine of part performance to be the basis for specifically performing an alleged contract which is void under the statute of frauds. However, this Court has firmly rejected the doctrine of part performance as a basis for estoppel. Grantham v. Grantham, 205 N.C. 363, 171 S.E. 331 (1933). The doctrine of part performance, or acceptance of benefit, or quasi-estoppel, has no place in the jurisprudence of North Carolina and will not displace the necessity of a writing. Id. The specific performance of an unenforceable agreement to convey real property on the basis of part performance would be the equivalent of a suppression of the statute of frauds. Id. See also Duckett v. Harrison, 235 N.C. 145, 69 S.E.2d 176 (1952).
Further, the paper writing in this case is unenforceable by whatever name, be it “land contract” or otherwise. Certainly the paper writing was not the typical installment land contract.