Court Opinion

ID: 9885824
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 15:09:01.331592+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:49:15.794164
License: Public Domain

On Motion nor Rehearing.
Mr. Chief Justice Wolverton
delivered the opinion. 5. The appellant, by his petition for rehearing, strenuously insists that the entire arrangement or contract subsisting between the parties touching the land, the subject of the purchase, was merged in the warranty deed executed by Coach and delivered to Kroll and Sparrow, and that henceforth the latter were precluded from setting up any other contractual relations than such as the deed witnesses. • The ruleosuggested that all previous and contemporary negotiations and agreements concerning the sale and purchase of land merge in the deed of conveyance, so that it becomes an express, entire, and final contract between the parties, may be conceded, but it is difficult to understand that it can have the least application to the case at bar. Of course, the fact that the deed was made was pertinent and strong evidence that the parties were dealing concerning the land in proportions as indicated' by its terms; but it cannot stand as the final and conclusive contract between them, so as to exclude or preclude any other condition that the law might entail, where the transaction from the beginning is attacked for fraud, and it is made to appear that the grantees were induced to accept the conveyance through the deceit and fraudulent intrigue of the grantor. Thus, it was the theory of plaintiffs that, while the deed conveyed to them all tho land they bargained for, yet it did not convey all that their money paid for, and consequently all that they were entitled to, looking throughout the transaction, and considering the relations the parties sustained to each other, and the method adopted by which the defendant procured the money of plaintiffs with which to complete the purchase. *478The scheme was one calculated to mislead and defraud the plaintiffs, and we found, after a very careful scrutiny of the testimony, that such was its legal effect, and that defendant purchased more land with their money than they obtained a deed for, and that he ought to render up to them the overplus, having become trustee thereof ex maleficio for their use. Now, to say that the deed concludes the plaintiffs absolutely, as against the. fraudulent intrigue of the defendant, when accepted and received without knowledge of the fraud, is to preclude them from any judicial inquiry into the matter whatever, and to send them away remediless. The deed is^o more effective to conclude plaintiffs from inquiry touching the fraud than would the original contract have been, had it been wholly reduced to writing. But the defendant, having deceived the plaintiffs, and procured from them their money through fraud, while acting in the capacity of an agent for them, the law declares him a trustee ex maleficio, in spite of the contract which he induced them to enter into by misleading them as to the real terms of the purchase from the original owners. So it must hold him, because of his mala fides, a trustee of the land he purchased with plaintiffs’ money, in spite of the deed which he in like manner and by the same fraudulent scheme or intrigue induced them to accept. No person can be precluded by any contract or writing that he has been induced to enter into through fraud or deceit, and the circumstance that the writing happens to be a deed of warranty, and executed with the greater solemnity, cannot alter the rule, so that we are constrained to hold that the plaintiffs are -not precluded by the deed to insist upon the relief demanded.
Affirmed : Rehearing Denied.