87 W. Va. 204 | W. Va. | 1920
This is a suit for partition brought by plaintiffs as heirs of the late Jackson Spriggs, who died in 1875, against the defendants, the principal object of which is to divide and partition among those entitled thereto a tract originally described as containing four thousand acres, but as claimed by plaintiffs containing by actual survey fifty-five hundred acres, situated in Raleigh County, and as incident thereto and necessary to a final disposition of the cause, to have set aside as fraudulent and void and as clouds upon plaintiffs’ title; first, a deed from Joseph Soission 'and'wife to A. S. Fuller, dated December 1, 1896, purporting to convey to the grantee two thousand one hundred acres, part of the fifty-five hundred acre tract; second, a deed from A. S. Fuller and wife to James T. McCreery, dated December 15, 1896, purporting to convey to the grantee therein the said two thousand one hundred acres.
And likewise and for the same reason to have set aside and removed as clouds, first, a deed from James T. McCreery to A.' S'. Fuller, dated October 13, 1897, purporting to convey to the latter six hundred acres out of said larger tract; second, a deed from A. S. Fuller and wife to Frank M. Fuller, dated February 3, 1898, purporting to convey to the grantee therein
The decree below dismissed the plaintiffs’ bill as to the defendants McCreery and Sarah M. Fuller, thereby adjudicating that the fifteen hundred acres of the land taken off the northwestern end or side of the tract claimed by plaintiffs and covered by said deeds, did not belong to the partitioners and that they were not entitled to have partition of that part of the land so claimed by them.
The bill and proceedings show that the land of which partition is sought was acquired by plaintiffs’ ancestor Jackson Spriggs from John Stewart and wife by deed of August 9, 1870, being described as one undivided third part of a tract of twelve, thousand acres, and being'parts of lots 5 and 9 of the Moore and Beckley survey, and which land was in 1871 returned delinquent, and later, in 1873, sold in the name of Charles Stewart’s heirs, and purchased by one George 0. Bloomer; and it is alleged and proven that before the expiration of a year from the. date of sale Jackson Spriggs redeemed from Bloomer his interest in said land, as did also Soission and Wilhelm their interests therein,, leaving Bloomer possessed of the remaining interest in said tract. The land so returned delinquent and sold, and purchased by Bloomer in 1873, was a tract of about 15,733 acres, and considerable stress is laid by counsel for appellees upon the fact that the sales to Spriggs, and Soission and Wilhelm were of one undivided third of 12,000 not of 15,733 acres, but in the view we take of the case and the conclusion we have reached, this fact is not very important.
In order to reach a correct conclusion upon the conflicting claims of appellants and appellees, we think it unnecessary to go back into the chain of title further than the decree of partition relied on by appellants, pronounced in 1880, in the suit of Francis and Dushane v. John Wilhelm and others, a suit by plaintiffs as creditors of said Wilhelm to subject his interest
But we are here confronted with the fact that in that creditors’ suit in 1880, the court determined by its decree that before the interest of the judgment debtor Wilhelm should be sold, a partition of the land should be made between the owm ers, wherefore on June 6, 1879, a decree was entered adjudging and ordering that three commissioners, of whom defendant James T. MeCreery was one, being first duly sworn, should proceed to lay off and .divide the real estate described in “Exhibit D,” having regard to quantity and quality, and assign one of the said three parts to George C. Bloomer, one to Joseph Spriggs’ heirs, and the other to John Wilhelm and Joseph Soission, and to divide the latter third equally between the owners thereof. Said decree pronounced in said cause, on June D, 1880, upon the incoming of the report of the commissioners, James A. Hutchinson, ■ surveyor, James T. MeCreery, and Robert Warden, unexcepted to, was that the report be confirmed, it appearing from sáid report that the commissioners allowed to Jackson Spriggs’ heirs 4000 acres off the south
After this decree, according to the pleadings and proofs,- each of the partitioners took possession of the parcels allotted to them respectively and acquiesced in the partition thus made, without complaint from anyone then related to the title, for more than fifteen years. Indeed no one except the defendants not parties to that partition, up to the time of this suit, ever questioned the rights of the partitioners to the particular tracts awarded them. They all elected to take and hold in severalty according to the decree. They caused their respective tracts to be separately taxed and paid taxes thereon; they each leased the lands or parts thereof in severalty and took the rents, issues and profits thereof in the same way, and they and their successors in title have continued to do so down to the date of this suit, disturbed only by the defendant MoCreery in the manner alleged in the bill, after he became the trusted and confidential agent and friend .of plaintiffs for looking after their lands, paying taxes thereon, renting the lands and collecting the rents, and also for the purpose of making sale thereof.
The bill alleges that defendant McCreery became such agent
The bill alleged and the answer admits, that as partitioned in 1880, the dividing line of plaintiffs land as laid down on the plat of the surveyor ran from what is shown thereon as the western corner of James Meadows, on the south line of said lot No. 9, thence running N. 25° E. a straight line to the north side of said lot. That McCreery knew this line and its location, beginning at said corner^ is not only admitted by him but proven by his letters and by the leases he made as agent for plaintiffs, one of which leases covered a large farm within the boundary of the 1500 acres, to which he and the defendant Fuller are now laying claim. And that McCreery as agent fox plaintiffs took and had charge of all the lands claimed by plaintiffs up to said partition line from the beginning of his agency to about the time it terminated in 1915, there is no room for controversy, though in the meantime, as alleged and proven, he began as early as 1895, perhaps in 1893, to lay plans to acquire title surreptitiously to the 1500 acres in controversy. In 1893., as the record shows, he caused a survey of the plaintiffs’ tract to be made by Milton Curtis, a surveyor, which disclosed that there were contained in the boundary about 5500 acres instead of 1000 acres as reported by the commissioners in the partition in 1880. Learning of this larger acreage he requested the surveyor to run a line parallel to the line run in 1880, beginning at or about the southeastern comer of the Meadows tract, so as to cut off the 1500 acres of the lot as partitioned and leave only 4000 acres. Curtis would not or did not do this, and later, in 1895, McCreery procured another surveyor, Lavender, to run or protract this new line, so as to cut off from those he was representing as agent 'the 1500 acres. After doing this, about December 1, 1906, he personally secured from Soission and wife, for a nominal con
There are so many other matters showing McCreery’s fraudulent purpose that they can not be detailed here. Enough has been said to show his relationship of agency and his fraudulent design upon plaintiffs’ property. Much stress is placed by
In the face of this record what does the defendant McCreery offer in defense of his title to the land claimed by plaintiffs? First, he would have, us go back to the original contract of Jackson Spriggs for the third of 12,000 acres, and the contract with Bloomer, the tax purchaser, redeeming the land from the tax sale, and to now correct the alleged mistake in the partition decree, for which, if a mistake, he as one of the commissioners of the court is in part responsible. In our view of the case it is wholly immaterial whether or not a mistake was made in laying off the Spriggs land in the Francis and Dushane suit. The fact is that, as therein allotted the Spriggs heirs, they claimed the land, and that McCreery as agent’ claimed it for them up to the time and after he discovered le supposed excess of acreage by survey made by Curtis, sur
Another proposition neutralizing defendants’ theory of a void decree of partition is that plaintiffs’ ripened their right into good title in -severalty as against their co-tenants, by color of title and adverse possession under it. In Bussell v. Tennant- et al.. 63 W. Va'. 623, point 4 of the syllabus, we held that, “A tenant in common in sole possession of the land, may make his possession adverse to his fellow-tenant, by repudiating or disavowing the relation of tenancy in common between them and any act or conduct of his signifying intention to hold, occupy and enjoy the premises exclusively of which the tenant out of possession lias knowledge, or of which he has sufficient information to put him upon inquiry, amounts to an ouster of such tenant, and from the time when he has notice thereof the possession of the other party is adverse.” And we held in that case that where advérse possession is so established against •a cotenant the deed, will, patent or other intrument under which both had claimed originally operates in favor of the claimant by adverse possession as color of title so as to extend
Another theory relied on is that plaintiffs had abandoned the land west of the line run from the eastern comer of the Meadows tract, and between it and the original line of the partition decree of 1880. MeCreery had that line run for his own purposes, and there is not a particle of evidence justifying the conclusion of any such abandonment by any one ’ of the parties with knowledge of the facts which were for years concealed from them by MeCreery. On the contrary the evidence shows that although MeCreery was in the meantime pursuing his purpose to acquire the land, he continued to rent it as the land of plaintiffs.
Another proposition is that the deed from James C. Spriggs and others to MeCreery^ one of the deeds attacked for fraud in its procurement, should be treated as a correction of the supposed error in the decree of 1880. That deed does not purport to correct any error; besides it is not between the parties to the partition. It does not purport to disturb the partition; it leaves the original partition stand as to every party to it; its only purpose, so far as MeCreery is concerned, was to get all the land allotted to plaintiffs between the partition line laid down on the plat and the line which he had run for his own purposes from the eastern corner of Meadows’ land.
Another principle which entitles plaintiffs to relief against MeCreery is that an agent or attorney while standing in that relationship will not be permitted to deal with the subject of the agency so as to obtain any part of it for himself. And any interest therein obtained by him for the purpose of perfecting or clearing title thereto in himself will be treated as accruing to his principal, and he will be regarded in equity as holding it in trust for his principal. Keenan v. Scott, 64 W. Va. 137; Newcomb v. Brooks, 16 W. Va. 32; Dorr v. Camden, 55 W. Va. 226; Central Land Co. v. Obenchain, 92 Va. 130; Segar v. Edwards, 11 Leigh 213; Reilly v. Oglebay, 25 W. Va. 36.
Our decision will reverse the decree below, and set aside and annul the deed from James S. Spriggs and others to James T. McCreery, of March 8, 1907; also the deed from said Me-Creery to A. S. Fuller, of October 13, 1897; and the deed from said Fuller and wife to their son F. M. Fuller^ of February 3, 1898; as fraudulent and void, and remove tire same as clouds upon the title of plaintiffs. But as to the deed from Joseph Soission to said A. S. Fuller, of December 1, 1896, and that of A. S. Fuller to said McCreery, of December 15, 1896, the decree will be that in so far as either of said deeds undertakes to vest title in said McCreery, that he took and holds the same in trust for plaintiffs, and that he shall make and execute a deed quitclaiming to them any and all interest in said land acquired thereby; and the cause will be remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings therein as directed herein, and further according to the rules and principles governing courts of equity.
Reversed; decree for plaintiffs.