Court Opinion

ID: 9830347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:08:07.342555+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:19.916934
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
In behalf of appellant, among other things, vigorous complaint is made of our failure to dispose of what is referred to as “appellant’s third and fourth propositions.” These propositions are placed in the latter part of appellant’s brief and do not appear to be especially emphasized, and on original consideration, from the statements and propositions quoted in our original opinion, we concluded that the quoted propositions were those upon which appellant relied for a reversal of the judgment. In view, however, of the earnestness with which appellant urges his motion for rehearing, we will now notice the third and fourth propositions.
The third and fourth propositions are as follows:
“III. Because the court erred in failing to sustain and not considering the third proposition upon which the appeal is predicated (Brief, p. 13), reading as follows: ‘George having pleaded that at the time the deed was given it was understood that Williamson could still pay the debt and thereby redeem the land (so that the deed was really a mortgage), and the evidence having raised this issue, the court should have submitted appellant’s issue No. 1.’
“IV: Because the court erred in failing to sustain and not considering the fourth proposition upon which the appeal is predicated, reading as follows: ‘The objection made by appellant to the issue No. 1 submitted by the court, to the effect that same failed to take into consideration the pleadings and evidence that the acceptance of the deed was conditional, in that Williamson still had the right to pay the debt, should have been sustained.’ ”
In answer to appellee’s plea of a discharge of his indebtedness by the delivery of a deed as recited in our original opinion, appellant filed a supplemental petition which covers more than four pages of the transcript, which, so far as pertinent, gives a running account of the various transactions between the parties. It is alleged that the defendant represented the land upon which the trust deed was given as worth $100 an acre “or better”; that appellant was led to believe appellee’s representations of condition and value relating thereto; that appellant relied upon such representations; that, when the debt matured, appellee represented that he was unable to pay the same, and that he did not care to give up the land; “but that he would make the plaintiff a deed to the property so that plaintiff would not be called upon to go to the expense of foreclosing a lien in the event he (the defendant) would not pay the same at a later date, but the plaintiff informed the defendant that he would not care to take the land at one-half its value and only wanted his money and he would agree with the defendant to extend the indebtedness until the fall of the year when the defendant’s crops would mature and the defendant could pay the same, and that in the meanwhile he would take the deed and hold it with the understanding, however, that it should not become operative unless and until the defendant should fail or refuse to pay the indebtedness at the extended period set out above, and shortly thereafter the plaintiff had occasion to be near Covington, in Hill county, near which the land involved in this case is situated, and that he went and looked at the same and he found for the first time that the land was not as he understood it to be, as above detailed.”
The petition further describes the land as badly washed, poisoned with “Johnson grass” and weeds, without improvements, etc., and that thereupon, after “returning to Wichita county, where he and defendant lived, he approached the defendant and informed the defendant that he had been laboring under a misapprehension at the time of his transactions with the defendant and that under no circumstances could he or would he take the land in satisfaction of his indebtedness. The defendant thereupon said that this was quite satisfactory with him and agreed that the arrangements theretofore made whereby a deed would be drawn up to be delivered and become effective during the fall would no longer exist, but that the defendant would pay the indebtedness in any event; that the de*763fendant informed the plaintiff that he would not care to sell it at all on account of its be- • ing left to him by his father, and thereupon defendant thereafter asserted ownership over said property and rented the same and collected the rents which were deposited in his name in the bank at Covington until withdrawn, and treated it as his, and said deed was never accepted and was never to become a deed, and said indebtedness was never wiped out, but has at all times existed since said time,” etc.
In a general way, it may be said that the plaintiff’s testimony was in accord with the allegations made in the supplemental petition ; but it is to be observed that the plaintiff does not allege or testify that at the particular time the defendant proposed to, and in fact did, execute and deliver to the plaintiff his deed, it was understood that the deed was not to take effect. Indeed, it was assumed in behalf of appellant himself on the trial below that the oral agreement that such conveyance would not be in effect was subsequent to the date of its delivery, as must be implied from his requested submission of the following special issue, which was given by the court, to wit:
“Did W. F. George and P. G. Williamson, subsequent to the making of the conveyance dated March 11, 1922, from Williamson and wife to George, agree orally that such conveyance would not be effective, but that Williamson would in all events pay the note and keep the land.”
The pleading, as a whole, seems susceptible of the construction that the plaintiff was seeking to avoid the effect of the deed because of the fraudulent representations of the defendant relating to the character or value of the land on which the trust deed rested, and the court seems to have adopted this construction, as will be seen from the verdict of the jury, quoted in our original opinion, in that special issues 2 and 3 were submitted to the jury, by which the jury was called upon to find whether the defendant represented the land to be worth $100 per acre, and to find what was in fact the value of the land. The jury answered that the defendant made no such representations, and gives a value of the land in excess of the amount of the indebtedness, and we find in the record no objections that were made to the submission of said issues. Indeed, the issues submitted to the court were requested in behalf of appellant, and “given” by the trial judge, in answer to which the jury found that it was subsequent to the making of the deed relied upon by defendant; that defendant, Williamson, orally agreed that “such conveyance would not be effective, but that Williamson would in all events pay the note and keep the land.”
Special issue No. 1, requested by the plaintiff and refused by the court, which is referred to in proposition 3 above, reads as follows:
“Gentlemen of the jury, at or about the time the conveyance dated March the 11th, 1922, was executed from Williamson and wife to George, was it understood that, notwithstanding said conveyance, the said Williamson could thereafter, within two or three years’ time, pay the debt and keep the land?”
 It is to be noted that the special issue so requested would not require a finding that, at the very time Williamson and wife executed their deed to George, it was understood that Williamson could thereafter, “within two or three years’ time, pay the debt and keep the land.” To constitute the deed a mortgage, it must have in effect been so agreed at the very time of its execution and delivery, otherwise the agreement would amount to no more than a conditional sale. It seems difficult to predicate a reversal of the judgment below on the theory that the deed of Williamson and wife to the plaintiff was a mortgage. If it was, then immediately upon its acceptance the trust deed became of no further force and effect; and, yet it appears that, instead of declaring upon the deed as a mortgage and seeking a foreclosure of a lien thereby created and a sale through the court’s process, appellant proceeded to secure a sale of the land under the trust deed, thus entirely repudiating the theory that the deed of Williamson and wife was a mortgage. We do not think appellant can be permitted to assume such contradictory positions.
The fourth proposition involves the same question. As it seems to us, the fact, if established, that the deed of Williamson and wife was conditional in the sense that Williamson still had the right to pay the debt, is wholly immaterial. It would amount-to no more than that the execution of the deed and its acceptance by the plaintiff operates to vest the right and title in the plaintiff, subject only to a right in Williamson to secure a reconveyance in event he was able within the specified time to pay the debt. It does not appear in the record that Williamson is now, or has ever been since its creation, able to pay the debt, and we know of no rule of law or of equity which under any circumstance would require him to avail himself of the reserved right to reinvest himself with the title.
It may not be improper to further observe that the plaintiff testified that tlie deed from Williamson and wife to him had never been recorded and that he had received the sum of $1,009 less the trustee’s commission for the sale of the land under the trustee’s deed, and the record fails to clearly show the person or corporation who, at the trustee’s sale, paid the money and received the trustee’s deed to the land, thus suggesting a *764possible difficulty to the reinvestment of the. title in the appellee Williamson.
Other assignments of error presented in the motion for rehearing, we think, are sufficiently disposed of in our original opinion, and, for the reasons therein and herein stated, we think the motion for rehearing should be overruled.