Court Opinion

ID: 9833546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:48:46.649598+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:04.133211
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Defendants in error contend in their motion for rehearing that under their pleadings and the facts proved at the trial they are entitled to have a “reformation of the contract” with May.
[4] Courts of equity have no authority to reform contracts in advance of their attempted enforcement, except in so far as this may be accomplished in the correction of written instruments relied on as the evidence of contracts. Pom. Eq. Jur. §§ 112, 870.
[5] But the doctrine is elementary that where a contract has been made and in reducing it to writing an error is committed through accident, mistake, or the fraud of one of the parties without the knowledge of the other, so that when completed the instrument does not constitute a true record of the agreement, a court of equity has the power, under a proper showing, to reform the writing so as to make it speak the truth. More than this the court cannot do. It is not-authorized to make a contract for the parties; nor can it put into the instrument anything except what the parties by their original agreement intended should be there.
[6] The only writing involved in this controversy brought to the attention of the court is the deed from the Cearleys to May. We are not authorized to reform that instrument, because both the pleadings and the evidence show that it contains exactly what the parties intended that it should. R. N. Cearley, who made the contract of sale and who appears from the evidence to be the only beneficiary among the grantors, understood fully the character of the conveyance he was making; and because he did so understand its import he insisted that May should bind himself thereafter in writing to reconvey at the end of Ms tenure. This agreement May has failed' to comply with, and Oearley is now left without any written evidence of its having been made. As stated in the original opinion, if the execution of the conveyance by the defendants in error to *169May in that form was procured by fraud, it might, upon a proper showing, furnish grounds for a rescission of the contract and a cancellation of that instrument; but that cancellation should not be awarded except upon a state of facts which would justify a rescission. “When there is no fraud or mistake in the preparation of an instrument, and it appears that the party signing it understood its language and purport, it cannot be reformed on the faith of a contemporaneous oral promise which was not kept.” 34 Cyc. 922. The instrument must stand or fall as it is written. Olmstead v. Michels (C. C.) 36 Fed. 455, 1 L. R. A. 840; Brintnall v. Briggs, 87 Iowa, 538, 54 N. W. 531; Sanford v. Gates, 21 Mont. 277, 53 Pac. 749.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.