50 Minn. 546 | Minn. | 1892
In January, 1891, an action between these parties was pending and at issue in the district court in Winona county. This plaintiff, as administrator, had sued for the recovery of $25,-000 upon an alleged account stated between the intestate, Lena Weinberg, and the defendant. The defendant, denying that there had been an account stated, alleged, both as a defense and as a
Some seven or eight months after the entry of such judgment application was made to the court by motion to reform the stipulation and release upon which judgment had been entered, so that the terms of the release by the defendant should be limited to the defendant’s claim or right of action on account of the sum of $12,000, referred to in the answer, “which was heretofore found concealed in the trunks of the said plaintiff’s intestate;” and that the judgment be amended to conform to the stipulation so reformed. This application was allowed, and the plaintiff prosecutes this appeal from the order allowing the motion. The motion was supported by affidavits, setting forth a remarkable state of facts, which will be briefly stated. For many years prior to her decease the intestate had been employed by the defendant as housekeeper in an hotel kept by him, and was intrusted with the hiring and paying of servants and the purchase of supplies for the house. The defendant implicitly relied upon her honesty, and intrusted her with such sums of money as she claimed to need for such purposes. At the time of the execution of the agreement and release and the settlement of the litigation, as above stated, there had been found, concealed within a false bottom in a trunk of
We need not consider or decide whether the release and judgment would bar or prejudice the claim of this defendant to recover the money subsequently discovered. The order appealed from was sought and obtained on the theory that such was the effect of the release and judgment if not modified or reformed, and we assume that such was the case.
Conceding that the mistake of fact was such that the agreement, embracing mutual releases, might have been wholly set aside, yet the court had not the power, on a mere motion, supported by affidavits, to modify or reform the same, as was done. What was embraced in the instrument was put there as matter of mutual agreement, and had effect as a contract of the parties. The defendant could not, on motion, be relieved, in whole or in part, from the release which, by the terms of the instrument, he had effected, leaving the other party still concluded and bound by the corresponding release on his part. That would not be a relieving of the parties from an agreement entered into under such a mistake that it ought not to stand, but it would be a reformation of the agreement on a mere motion, if not the making of a new agreement, (in form,) for the parties, to which the plaintiff had never assented. It cannot be assumed that the
Order reversed.