86 Va. 527 | Va. | 1889
delivered tlie opinion of the court.
The court is of opinion that the circuit court properly refused to decree the specific execution of the contract of sale asserted in this case. Bor the complainants it is contended that they have a right to the property in controversy, as purchasers from a duly-authorized agent, and for the respondents it is insisted that the agent had no authority to sell. It seems that, in the conduct of the transactions out of which this litigation arose, the defendants, John Sheridan and A. P. Moore, were reprsented by Sheridan alone, and that the firm of Yager & Campbell, real estate agents, doing business in the city of Boanoke, were represented by Campbell. As might have been anticipated, therefore, nearly all of the evidence in the record which bears upon this question of agency is contained in the testimony of these two witnesses, and their statements are in absolute conflict. In this conflict we think the account of the transaction given by Sheridan is more consistent with itself, and better sustained by the other facts and circumstances of the case. His statement is that he did not place the lots in Mr. Campbell’s hands for sale in June, 1888, but that between the 24th and 29th days of August, in that year, he authorized Yager & Campbell to sell them' for a period of thirty days. As the record shows, Mr. Sheridan had already put these lots in the hands of a Mr. Hockaday, another real-estate agent, and he was therefore naturally averse, as the record further shows, to placing the property in the hands of any other agent. Besides, Mr. Campbell himself admits, in a conversation that subsequently occurred between himself and Sheridan, that the latter told him to his face substantially -what he now asserts as to what passed at the meeting which ook place between the 24tli and 29th of August, and that he (Campbell) then said that he would not swear positively that no such conversation as that detailed by Sheridan had occurred; * * “for I [meaning Campbell] have more faith in your [meaning Sheri
Decree aeeirmed.-