45 Ga. 175 | Ga. | 1872
This was a bill filed by Mary A. Brown, administratrix of Warren Brown, against the executors of William Brown, deceased, to compel the specific performance of a parol contract for the sale of lot of land number thirty-one, in the twenty-fifth district of Chattooga county, alleged to have
On the trial of the case, the jury found a verdict for the complainant, decreeing a specific performance of the alleged contract. A motion was made for a new trial on several grounds; but the principal ground insisted on was that no contract was proved which would entitle the complainant to a decree for a specific performance of it, which motion was overruled and the defendants excepted. The answer to the complainant’s bill denies the alleged parol contract. The testator, William Brown, made his will about ten days before his death, and devised his land, including the lot in controversy, to his wife during her life, and, at her death, to be sold and equally divided between his children named therein, one of whom was his son Warren. The evidence shows that the complainant’s intestate was not in the possession of the lot of land until after his father’s death. It is claimed that his father, in a letter written to Warren (who then lived in Arkansas), on the 28th September, 1857, requesting him to come and see him and expressing the hope that he would come, induced him to sell out there and move back to Georgia, at a sacrifice of $600; but there is not one word in that letter about any contract for the sale of the land to him. It is shown, by the evidence, that he came to his father’s and lived there until his father’s death, and that his father said to Shropshire and others a day or two before his death, “that his son Warren had come here to wait on him in his old age, and spent $600 to come, and he wanted to make him whole, and wanted Shropshire to see that his son Warren have a good title to his lower lot of land — a title they can’t jostle him in.” Kirby .states that Ward, one of the executors of William Brown, in a discussion with him about his defense, said “that he had no doubt some understanding, as is stated in the bill, existed between the old man Brown and his son Warren, but Warren had no writing and his wife and children could not hold it.” This is substantially the evidence in
Let the judgment of the Court below be reversed.