222 N.W. 921 | Minn. | 1929
The gist of the action was fraud and misrepresentation in respect to the location and value of five lots which plaintiff was induced to receive as part payment for a rooming house he transferred to defendant Birkland. When the case closed, the court on the motion of C. J. Carlson dismissed as to him. The appeal questions the correctness of this ruling and also rulings excluding evidence of like misrepresentations in other deals wherein C. J. Carlson conveyed other lots near to the lots here involved. The complaint is unduly prolix, and it will not be necessary to refer to it in detail. The trial developed these facts:
Plaintiff, an Armenian of some years' residence in this country, was the owner of a rooming house in Minneapolis which he was willing to dispose of. One Mrs. McNutt, a broker, for a commission undertook to assist him, and defendant Birkland was brought in touch with plaintiff. Birkland knew that defendant G. C. Carlson controlled real estate for trading purposes. And the proposition was made to plaintiff to transfer his rooming house, subject to a mortgage of $850, to Birkland for $550 in cash and five lots in Riverside plat No. 7 in Fridley township, Anoka county. Defendant C. J. Carlson owned 70 or more lots in this plat and had previously conveyed others therefrom through the instrumentality of his brother, defendant G. C. Carlson. G. C. Carlson and Birkland took plaintiff to Columbia Heights, a village adjoining the northeast city limits of Minneapolis, and purported therein to point out the lots proposed to be conveyed in the deal and stated they were worth $350 each. As a matter of fact the lots were situate four or five miles further away from the city limits of Minneapolis and worth, according to the testimony adduced by plaintiff, about $5 *221 apiece. Neither Birkland nor G. C. Carlson had any interest in the lots at that time. When plaintiff had entered a contract for the deal, G. C. Carlson paid his brother $125 and received a deed to the five lots, leaving a blank space for a grantee. Birkland says he paid G. C. Carlson $200 for the lots. Plaintiff's name was thereupon inserted as grantee in the deed. So that C. J. Carlson through the instrumentality of his brother disposed of his lots to plaintiff. Whether there was a sale of the lots in good faith to his brother by this unusual method of executing a deed with the grantee in blank was a jury question.
If there was room for a finding by the jury that in so getting rid of undesirable lots C. J. Carlson made use of his brother as agent, C. J. Carlson should be held responsible for the misrepresentations in respect to their location and value. Atherton v. Barber,
In Berkey v. Judd,
"Fraud opens wide the door for all fairly relevant evidence including evidence as to similar but unconnected facts in order to show systematically fraudulent intention on the part of the party sought to be charged."
Albrecht v. Rathai,
The order is reversed and plaintiff is granted a new trial as to defendant C. J. Carlson. *223