Court Opinion

ID: 9624736
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:15:27.125167+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:53.844573
License: Public Domain

WORTPIEN, Justice
(concurring in the results).
I concur in -the results reached by Chief justice McDonough.
In this case appellants were not being imposed on by respondents. Appellants sought to get out of their bargain and to do so entirely at respondents’ expense.
I am in general agreement with the doctrine that equity should give protection to a defaulting purchaser whose default is neither wilful nor deliberate against a grasping vendor who is waiting to spring the moment the vendee defaults in the slightest manner, and who seeks not the purchase *269money due him but the property sold plus enormous amounts in addition.
I,however, believe that the same equitable tolerance is not demanded or even proper when we have facts such as those in this case and such as were present in the case of Perkins v. Spencer.1
Here we have purchasers who sought to pull out of their bargain who charged fraud and misrepresentation, and who sought long after having gone into possession to have the contract set aside.
The trial court in its finding of fact No. 12 found:
“That on the 1st day of December, 1953, the plaintiffs elected to rescind the said uniform real estate contract and notified the defendants in writing that they had rescinded said contract * * *»
When a vendor has received substantial amounts as down payment and installments and the vendee has defaulted — but has not rescinded the contract — and the vendor seeks to take back the property in a summary manner and also' to retain amounts which often constitute a substantial portion, if not most, of the purchase price,2 equity may well and generally should afford some relief to the vendee. But when the vendee charges the vendor with fraud and sharp practice and rescinds the agreement, he should not be the recipient of equity’s bounty, but should, if he fails to establish the fraud, be held to have rescinded his contract and receive no assistance to recover back part of what he has paid.
Adopting a position such as was taken by this court in the case of Perkins v. Spencer, supra, argues strongly against selling under a uniform real estate contract. The vendor in such a contract has not only the vendee as the other party but the court as an interested second to the vendee.
If the vendor in this case'and the Perkins case had taken a mortgage for the amount remaining after the down payment and had foreclosed because of the vendee’s failure to pay, we would not interfere because the vendor got the property at sheriff’s sale and still kept the payment made or even took a deficiency judgment in addition thereto.
Had the defendants here and in the Perkins case sued and taken a judgment for the past due payments called for in the agreement and asked that the property be impressed with a lien for the same, we would probably be obliged to permit the vendee to suffer further losses.
In my opinion this case does not fall within the class of cases such as Malmberg v. Baugh,3 and other cases where relief was *270granted the vendee who had not repudiated and rescinded his contract, although in my opinion the entire line of such cases should he reexamined with a view of either prohibiting any provision for forfeiture or establishing a rationale in such cases that is more dependable than the whim of the judge attempting to make a new contract for the parties as to reimbursement of the seller because of the buyer’s breach.
HENRIOD, J., agrees with the conclusion reached in the main opinion and also with the reasoning of WORTHEN’S, J., concurring opinion.

. Utah, 243 P.2d 446.

. Croft v. Jensen, 86 Utah 13, 40 P.2d 198, where vendee paid $6,300 on a $6,500 contract.

. 62 Utah 331, 218 P. 975.