143 Mo. 501 | Mo. | 1898
This proceeding was begun as a suit in ejectment by plaintiff against I. N. McClanahan and Sam Caldwell for certain lands in Greene county of this State. On motion Jacob Sleeper was made a party defendant, and filed his answer in connection with the defendant Caldwell, setting up an equitable-defense and asked affirmative equitable relief, thus converting the action into an equitable proceeding. The suit was then dismissed as' to the defendant McClanahan.
The defendant’s answer alleged that the defendant Jacob Sleeper has for many years been the owner of
The defendant Sleeper further states that he had no knowledge or information whatever of any proceedings against himself whereby he was charged with taxes on any of his real estate in Greene county, nor of any proceedings by the collector of said county to collect the same, nor of any judgment against himself or his real estate, or of any sale thereunder for the taxes of 1891. That during the fall of 1893, when defendant was having his first settlement with said James B. Hampton on acount of his purchase of defendant’s lands under the tax proceedings against his father Jacob Henry Sleeper, the defendant, as the said Hampton well knew, sought and attempted to pay off and discharge all taxes of every kind against his land, and for that purpose went to the collector’s office and gave to the collector a list of the property owned by him in Greene county and told him he wanted to pay all taxes on the same and was ready and willing to do so, and that he did pay all the taxes due or claimed to be due by the collector and took his receipt therefor, and supposed and was assured by the collecter that all taxes against his land previous to that time were paid; that notwithstanding defendant’s payment of all taxes claimed to be due upon his lands and the assurance made to him that all taxes had been paid up to that date, two tax suits had been begun against him, as the owner of said lands, for alleged taxes due for the year 1891, at the instance of said James B. Hampton and at the sale of his lands under those proceedings the said James B. Hampton,
The abstract of the record does not show the filing of a reply by plaintiff, but the case was tried by the court on the twenty-second day of May, 1895, as if a reply had been filed, and a judgment was rendered for the plaintiff, from which defendant prosecutes this appeal.
To us all the essential allegations of facts set up in defendant Sleeper’s answer seems to have been sub
To the following questions James B. Hampton answers :
“Q. Now, that deed was made in the name of your sister? A. Yes sir, they were by Mr. Loy at our request.
“Q. Now you say it was arranged between you and Mr. Loy that the purchase under the second deed was for your benefit. You were to be the real purchaser? A. I told Col. Mead something to this effect: That having had these negotiations with these parties which had never been carried out and so on and to protect outsiders, I did not like to buy it -in my own name, and asked him to get some one to buy it in for my wife, that is for my wife and Mrs. Duncan, and that was arranged, and whatever arrangements were made with Mr. Loy was made by Col. Mead.
“Q. Col. Mead was your attorney? A. Yes, sir.
“Q. Loy afterward quitclaimed this land to your sister? A. Yes sir.
“Q. There was no other additional consideration for that except the fifty dollars that was paid at the sale. A. ’ No, sir.
“Q That fifty dollars was furnished by you? A. Yes, sir; furnished by me for'those parties. I speak for myself. I was acting in that capacity for my wife and Mrs. Duncan.”
While it is true that Hampton in this particular part of his statement says that he was acting for his wife and Mrs. Duncan (who by the way is the wife of his business partner) for all the purposes of this case
The facts in this case show that this land, together with about eight hundred acres of other lands owned by the defendant Sleeper, was first sold in 1891 for taxes, and that James B. Hampton became the purchaser thereof and had the deed thei’eto made to his wife; that the assessment and all the proceedings in the suit that resulted in the sale of said lands for taxes were made and prosecuted against the father of the present defendant, who at the time was dead; that when said suits were begun and the sale of the land was made for the taxes due thereunder (at which James B. Hampton became the purchaser in 1891 for his wife), the defendant Jacob Sleeper was in fact the owner of the land and at that time lived in the city of Boston in the State of Massachusetts. That when the defendant Jacob Sleeper in the summer of 1898 heard of the sale of his land and the purchase thereof by James B. Hampton in the name of his wife, he sent his agent and attorney, one Mr. Hodges, from Boston, Massachusetts, to Springfield, Missouri, the county seat of G-reene county, wherein said land was located, to settle and adjust the matter of Hampton’s claim to his land on account of the tax sale and his purchase thereat; and to pay all taxes and claim of every character that might be found to exist against it; and that while at Springfield said agent entered into an agreement with said Hampton whereby the defendant Sleeper was to make to said Hampton a deed to one forty acre tract of the land covered by the sheriff’s deed to Hampton’s wife, if Hampton and wife would quitclaim back to him all the balance of the land named in the sheriff’s deed, in order to relieve defendant’s lands from the cloud cast upon it by said Hampton’s deed. That when he accepted the deed to the forty acres of defend
In addition to the fact of the gross inadequacy of price paid for the land at the sale, and that the defendant Sleeper had been deceived into believing that all taxes against it had been paid so as to quiet all possible apprehensions of trouble from tax proceedings, one must be impressed by the circumstances surrounding the entire transaction that the tax suit against defendant’s land was to accomplish just what was done, to wit, divest him of title that the same may be invested by way of a sale in some one for the benefit of James B. Hampton rather than a good faith and disinterested effort to collect the state and county taxes due on the land. Hampton’s influence is manifest throughout the proceedings. His spirit is made visible in the handwriting upon every paperfiled in the case,
If the two tax suits begun against this land in which James B. Hampton played so prominent a part in their early inauguration, had been as carefully watched when the time for the State and county to realize at execution sale on the apparent objects of those suits, to wit, the collection of the taxes due, the county and State, instead of Hampton, would have received some benefit from the sale; but as it was the county and State in whose interests the suits were nominally prosecuted got nothing, and Hampton, as the result shows got all (the title to eight hundred and odd acres of land). The $50 paid by Hampton to the sheriff would not pay for the costs of the two proceedings. Yet Hampton as a final result of the two suits got
For the reasons stated above, the judgment of the circuit court will be reversed and the case remanded, with directions that it enter up a judgment in accord