241 N.W. 889 | Mich. | 1932
On November 14, 1924, appellant, Ford Motor Company, as vendor, agreed to sell to William Ford Company, Inc., as vendee, 1.2312 acres of land on Second boulevard in Highland Park, Michigan. The executory contract entered into provided for a payment of $15,000 upon the execution of the contract, and the additional sum of $88,000 in monthly instalments of $750 and interest. Sixteen months after the contract was entered into, vendee desired the erection of additional structures on the land at a cost of $36,600. Vendor agreed to pay the builder $30,000 of this amount, the remaining $6,600 to be paid by the vendee. Under date of March 19, 1926, a supplemental agreement was executed. After referring to the original contract, and the fact that the vendee had contracted with a building contractor for the erection of the additional structures at a cost of $36,600 on the land being sold, it provided for the payment of $30,000 of the cost by the vendor to the contractor, the sum so paid to be added to the purchase price under the contract, and the monthly payments thereunder to be increased $300 and interest. It further provided that the supplemental agreement should become and be part of the original contract.
In 1930, vendor notified vendee by registered mail that unless defaults in payments of monthly instalments, interest, and taxes be cured by October 23, *649
1930, it would declare the contract forfeited. Before the latter date arrived, the Union Guardian Trust Company was appointed receiver of the vendee, in a suit brought by plaintiffs Rowe and Guenther. On October 23, 1930, vendor served notice of forfeiture upon the vendee and the receiver, and thereafter filed a petition of intervention in the equity suit and sought permission to institute summary proceedings for repossession of the premises. The court in refusing such permission held that the vendor's contract was an equitable mortgage that could be foreclosed only in a chancery proceeding. The trial judge relied on the case ofWhitney v. Foster,
In the instant case, the Ford Motor Company, as appellant, remained the vendor under the land contract, under the original contract as supplemented by the agreement of March 19, 1926. The intention of the parties, as expressed by their agreement and a reasonable inference therefrom, must be controlling. We have frequently held that a contract in form may, through the acts of the parties, be a mortgage. Skupinski v. ProvidentMortgage Co.,
The order of the lower court is reversed, with costs to appellant, and case remanded with direction to grant appellant's petition for permission to bring summary proceedings before a circuit court commissioner to recover possession.
CLARK, C.J., and McDONALD, POTTER, SHARPE, NORTH, FEAD, and WIEST, JJ., concurred. *651