87 Neb. 711 | Neb. | 1910
The plaintiff and defendant both derive their claims to the real estate in question through one Miles Moore; the plaintiff through an unrecorded contract of purchase and alleged possession and improvement of the property, and the defendant through a warranty deed duly recorded. The'defendant claims to be an innocent purchaser without notice of plaintiff’s rights. The trial court found against him, and lie has appealed.
In Bowman v. Griffith, 35 Neb. 361, the third paragraph of the syllabus states the law as follows: “Where a claim
The defendant insists that this grading of the lot was not such an act of possession as required him to make any inquiry in regard to the rights of the parties who were doing the grading or procuring it to be done. He insists that the same parties were grading other lots at the same time that did not belong to them nor to this plaintiff, and that he had the right to assume that Mr. Moore still owned the lot and was procuring this grading to be done. We think the defendant is wrong in this position. When he saw unequivocal acts of ownership being exercised over the property, lie was under obligations to inquire who was thus assuming to be the owner of the property, and under such circumstances he could not presume without inquiry that Mr. Moore was expending about $200 in improving the lot, and immediately thereafter would sell to him for $250 a lot that before the improvement was worth $300. If the defendant was innocent in the transaction, his neglect to follow up the inquiry so plainly suggested by the circumstances will bring the loss, if any, upon him, rather than upon the plaintiff, who was at least equally innocent.
The judgment of the district court is
Affirmed.