Court Opinion

ID: 9602444
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:55:06.07891+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:47:23.167783
License: Public Domain

Duckworth, Chief Justice,
dissenting. I am unalterably opposed to changing the expressed and unmistakable will of a dead man when his lips are sealed in death. No one can look at the life of this donor without seeing his interest in military training, and since this was at the time of the gift an expressed charter intention, and he provided for a reverter if the property was not used for this purpose, reason would dictate that it reverts if this use of it ceases. He is not here to defend his known.will, but my judgment is on his side. Doubtless the property has since greatly increased in value, but the takers accepted this eventuality and were in honor bound to either comply with the condition *725or gracefully accept the reversion of the property regardless of its increased value.
To say as the majority do that since the charter provided for its amendment he intended that his condition be subject to all possible amendments is in my judgment to hold that he was unconcerned with the condition and intended that it be obliterated by future charter amendment. Such position is contrary to all human reason and would say the donor was a reckless, indifferent and foolish man because it would put him in a position of stipulating a meaningless condition. It is not solemn judicial reasoning to engage in the game of speculating as to the content of future amendments of the charter, the content of which he could not possibly have known at the time of the conveyance and then conclude that the cautious man who wrote the reverter provision did at the same time and in the same act suddenly become a carefree, reckless gambler who intended that his property by future amendment of the charter be used for all manner of purposes which he might abhor, but a departure from such sinful and unknowable uses would work a reverter. Sound and solid reason will accept nothing else but his expressed condition that the property be used for the purposes then at that time provided in the only charter in existence. If courts are to defeat known wishes of donors, let them try it as to those then living who can defend, but for the sake of human justice make them keep faith with the dead who can not defend.