Court Opinion

ID: 9827548
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 17:39:14.240701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:42:33.208589
License: Public Domain

Motion for Rehearing.
Appellant, in his motion for a rehearing, submits the propositions that, where a contract for the sale of land specifies certain indebtedness against the same, this is, in effect, a statement that there is no other indebtedness against said land, and that, where the aggregate amount of such indebtedness is stated, this is a warranty that there is no greater amount of indebtedness against it. As abstract propositions of law, these statements are correct. But, in order to be able to say that any rule of construction governs in the interpretation of an instrument, we must first know that the facts of the *213case do not bring it within the modifying influence of any other rule of construction.-
[13] As applied to the instant case, it is recited in the contract that there are certain specified incumbrances against the east half of the four leagues to be conveyed, and that these amount in the aggregate to $30,070, and that the debts specified include one-half, but no more, of the $21,000 Traylor purchase-money notes. But must this contract be therefore interpreted as representing that there was no other or greater indebtedness against the land? To do so would be to contradict the plain language of the instrument itself. The sixth clause of the contract expressly states that there was another and a different indebtedness of $13,000 against the land. The first clause of the contract implies that the other half of the 'Traylor note, not included in the specified indebtedness aggregating $30,070, existed against said land.
These seeming contradictions can be reconciled upon the theory that what the parties to the contract meant to express hy the language used therein, and what they thought was the legal meaning of such language, was that the specified incumbrances, amounting in the aggregate to $30,070, were the only incumbrances that appellee was to assume; that the $13,000 incumbrance was to be eliminated by appellee; and that appellant was to take the land subject to the blanket lien of the $21,000, one half of which he assumed, and the other half he expected to be able to shift to Holloway’s half of the land, or to look to Holloway’s half to meet the same. This is, in effect, what the testimony of -Green and Post shows, and what the jury found; and we are still of the opinion that there was a sufficient ambiguity in the contract to render such testimony admissible.
Motion overruled.