5 Wash. 247 | Wash. | 1892
Lead Opinion
The opinion of the court was delivered by
There is a disagreement between the parties to this action as to its nature and object. The respondent contends that it is an action to quiet title, while the appellants insist that it is an action for a specific performance of a contract alleged in the complaint. While it would require a liberal construction of the complaint to support the contention of the respondent, we are satisfied that it states sufficient facts to entitle him to equitable relief. The complaint alleges, in substance, that the defendant Gardner, on December 8, 1868, entered and purchased the land in controversy from the United States, at its land office at Olympia, and at the same time paid to the proper officer, at said land office, the price required by law to be paid for said land, and received the certificate of the register and receiver of the said land office, certifying the said payment and purchase by him; that thereafter (but the exact time is to the plaintiff unknown), the defendant Gardner, entered into a contract with one G. A. Meigs for the sale
We think the foregoing allegations of fact state a cause of action clearly entitling the plaintiff to the remedy of specific performance, if nothing more, and the demurrer to the complaint was therefore properly overruled.
The defendants, in their answer, after denying all the material allegations of the complaint, except that defendant Gardner purchased the land described in the complaint as therein set forth, pleaded as affirmative defenses to the action— (1) Peaceable and continuous possession of the land in the complaint described from the date of said pui’chase until about March 28,1889; (2) the statute of limitations; and (3) that the defendants, Peterson and Champoux, became the owners in good faith and for a valuable consideration of said land by means of a certain conveyance executed to them by Gardner about March 28, 1889, and duly recorded in King county on March 29, 1889, which deed was defectively acknowledged, but which was thereafter duly acknowledged and re-recorded on October 29, 1889, in the auditor’s office of said county; and pray that the plaintiff be forever barred from claiming any title or interest whatsoever in or to the said land or any part thereof, and that the alleged deed from Meigs to the Meigs Lumber and Shipbuilding Company and the deed from said company to plaintiff be declared null and void, and for further relief.
The appellants insist—(1) That no contract was proven; and (2) if a contract was proven it was an invalid one. It is not claimed, as a matter of fact, by appellants, that no contract whatever was entered into between Gardner and
“In 1869 I went to Port Madison (Meigs’ place of business) to sell Meigs this piece of timber land. I met him between the mill and his office, and I says, Meigs, I have got some timber land to sell you. He says, yes, what is it? And I says, it is right back of George Hood’s place, and he says, how much do you want for it? I says I want §1.50 an acre. Well, he says, is that land any good? I says, you know what the land is, and what I paid for the timber. Well, he says, the land is no good, I don’t want the land. I will give you §1.25 for the timber that is on the land, and he asked me for the certificate that I got from the land office, and he wrote on the back the very words I tell you. . . . He bought the timber. He did not want the land. He paid me §1.25 an acre.”
He also testified that he would have sold the land for the same price, as he deemed it worthless, if Meigs had said he wanted it. It appears that Gai’dner left the certificate with the contract written upon it with Meigs, who, in the year 1873, surrendered the same to the officers of the land office, and received the patent for the land, which he retained until he sold the premises to the Meigs Lumber and Shipbuilding Company in 1877.
After this transaction Meigs and Gardner never saw each other until a short time prior to March 28, 1889, when the former went to Vancouver, B. C., where the latter
After the register’s certificate was surrendered to the land office at Olympia, it appears to have been transmitted in the due and regular course of business to the general land office at Washington, and there placed on file. At the trial in the superior court the plaintiff offered in evidence a copy of it, together with the endorsements thereon certified by the commissioner under the seal of his office. The court admitted the paper in evidence over the objection of the defendants, and that ruling of the court is assigned as error. It is claimed by appellants—(1) That duly certified copies from the land offices in Washington and Oregon are admissible under the provisions of the Code of Washington, but not copies from the general land office; and (2) that even if a copy of the receiver’s certificate on file in the general land office is admissible as to matters of. business pertaining to such office, a certified copy of a private writing endorsed thereon is not competent to prove its contents.
While it is true that § 432 of the Code of Washington, 1881, only provides for the admission of certified copies from the land offices of Oregon and Washington, it does not necessarily follow that such copies of the same documents, after they have been transmitted to the general land office, are inadmissible as evidence. On this subject Green-leaf says that the weight of authority seems to have es
The contract, which appears upon the copy of the register’s certificate over the signature of Gardner, is in these words: “This is to certify that I have sold to G; A. Meigs all my right, title and interest to the within described land for value received.” This contract, as well as the testimony of Meigs, contradicts the evidence of Gardner that he sold and received pay for the timber merely and not the land. But the learned counsel for appellants insist that this contract, if proved, ought not to be enforced in equity for the reason that it is not sufficiently specific in its terms. The main objection is, that the price to be paid is not stated
It is claimed, however, that for eight or nine years after the execution of the contract Gardner paid the taxes himself through his friend Champoux, but the testimony of the latter hardly supports the contention of counsel. In answer to the interrogatory, “You were a friend of his, were you notC’ (referring to Gardner), he replied, “We had never had any dealings; I thought it was only a tax deed.
It is objected by appellants that the deed from Meigs to the Meigs Lumber Company was void, because it was made before that company filed its articles of incorporation in the office of the secretary of the then territory, but we think the objection is not tenable for the reason that it appears that the deed was not.delivered until after the said articles of incorporation had been properly filed.
The next contention of appellants is, that the respondent has been guilty of gross laches, and that the action .is barred by the statute of limitations. It is undoubtedly true that courts of equity do not look, with favor upon parties who have long slept upon their rights. But whether a party is guilty of such laches as will deprive him of equitable relief depends largely upon the circumstances of the particular case. If one party to a contract has failed to perform his part of the agreement for an unreasonable length of time, equity will not aid him in enforcing performance by the other party. But when there is a contract to convey land, and the purchaser has obtained possession and paid the purchase price, he is vested with an equitable title, and his delay in bringing an action to compel a conveyance of the legal title, however long delayed, will not defeat his remedy, unless, under the circumstances, a specific perform
As to the appellants Champoux and Peterson, it seems quite clear from the evidence that they had full notice of whatever right the respondent had under Gardner. In fact, Mr. Peterson himself testifies that he wrote to the respondent at Victoria in reference to purchasing this land from him. They paid nothing for the interest that Gardner undertook to convey to them just prior to the commencement of this action, and are, therefore, in no sense, bona fide purchasers for value.
We perceive no error in the record except as to the relief granted. As the legal title to the land is not in the respondent, as is shown by the pleadings and proofs, the judgment quieting his title cannot be sustained. The judgment is therefore set aside, and the cause remanded to the court below with directions to enter a decree that appellants execute to the respondent a good and sufficient conveyance of the legal title of the land described in the complaint.
Dissenting Opinion
(dissenting).—The court, I think rightly,
holds this to have been an action for specific performance of a contract to convey land. That contract was for the plaintiff to prove. No conveyance had ever been made except from agent to principal, and the patent ran to the defendant. To make this proof the plaintiff resorted to what I consider to be an extraordinary and most dangerous device. The contract happened to be written upon the back of the duplicate receiver’s receipt, an unimportant paper, which the routine of the general land office required should be surrendered when the patent was delivered by the agent of the government to the patentee, or the person by him designated to receive it. Now, under the plea that because that useless duplicate receiver’s receipt was in fact among the files of the land office, the court allows a copy of the receipt and the writing on the back of it to be received in a court of justice as evidence of this important contract, because the commissioner of the general land office has certified that he finds that writing there. The acceptance of this paper was based upon the theory that inasmuch as it was out of the possession of both parties to it, secondary evidence as to its contents was receivable. I am willing to admit that secondary evidence was admissible, but the certificate of the commissioner was not evidence either primary or secondary. Secondary evidence must be given upon the oath of a witness, either in court or by deposition. The copies of papers admissible under § 432, Code of 1881, are admissible as original papers, without the necessity of accounting for the loss of the originals. The paper here in discussion was, as the respondent himself contended, an informal conveyance, which, by reason of its informalities and want of acknowledgment, could be enforced only as a contract to convey. But with such an instrument the land office had no concern, and the commissioner was not made the custodian of it. If a complete deed had been