71 Pa. 450 | Pa. | 1872
The opinion of the court was delivered, by
It was decided by this court in Robinson v. Myers, 17 P. F. Smith 9, that when the jury finds a verdict for the defendant there can be no judgment entered upon a reserved point for the plaintiff. Such judgment being without any verdict to support it, wants a legal foundation and is therefore erroneous.
In order, however, to end this controversy we have been requested by the counsel of both parties to consider and decide the question reserved. That question was, whether the failure of the wife to record her deed until after the judgment was purchased by the plaintiff — no knowledge of the existence- of the deed being traced to him — gave to her husband a false credit, and was such laches on her part to the misleading of the plaintiff as will prevent her from setting up her title against him. It is supposed that the judgment of this court in Coates v. Gerlach, 8 Wright 43, is an authority in point, and upon this ground the learned judge below-entered judgment non obstante veredicto. But the decision in that case was expressly that the deed to the wife could not be sustained because it was more than a reasonable provision for her, and what is added as to her not recording the deed, is a reason for not regarding her case with favor, because she had studiously and purposely concealed her title for the purpose of giving her husband a false credit. “ In asking,” says Mr. Justice Strong, “ that a deed void at law should be sustained in equity, she is met with the fact that she asserted no right under it; in fact concealed its existence until after her husband had contracted the debts against which she now seeks to set it up.” But no such element as this,
Judgment reversed, and now judgment upon the verdict for Samuel Morris, the defendant below.