169 Ga. 1 | Ga. | 1929
In 1898 A. E. Wooley Sr. executed a security deed conveying a described plantation to John P. Lewis and John W. Akin. The land so conveyed comprised 1840 acres, more or less, and included “forty-three and one half (43-1/2) acres of lot number two hundred and thirty-seven (237) conveyed and more particularly described by Duncan Merchison deed to said Woolej', recorded in Book W of Deeds, page 272, Clerk’s Office Bartow Superior Court.” On the same day the grantor executed another security deed conveying the same land to John W. Akin and J. M. Neel. Both deeds were duly recorded. The grantor died intestate in 1902, leaving a son, A. E. Wooley, and a daughter, Mrs. Hattie M. Pitchford, as his only heirs at law. In 1904 the heirs at law undertook to liquidate the estate, and to that end negotiated a sale of 200 acres of the land to said John P. Lewis for $3000, and a loan of a certain amount to be secured by a deed to the rest of the land. In order that these transactions might be closed, Lewis, Akin, and Neel united in one quitclaim deed purporting to con
2. It is urged by the plaintiff that his immediate grantor, G. A. Todd Jr., purchased the land in dispute from the grantors in the warranty deed on the faith of the public record and without notice of any mistake in the deed, and that the executors of Lewis, the grantee, are estopped from contradicting the order of delivery apparent on the face of the public record, and from asserting title to the land in dispute as against the said C. A. Todd Jr., and his grantee. This contention can not be sustained if the purchaser had notice of the mistake in the date of the deed at the time of his purchase. Notice sufficient to excite attention and put a party on inquiry is notice of everything to which it is afterwards found such inquiry might have led. Civil Code (1910), § 4530.
3. The warranty deed to Lewis for 200 acres purported to convey full title. The only source of the grantor’s title was by inheritance of an equity from A. F. Wooley and by grant of legal title previously acquired by Lewis, Akin, and Neel from Wooley in virtue of the outstanding security deeds from Wooley to them. In these circumstances conveyance of full title to Lewis by the warranty deed involved prior conveyance by Lewis, Akin, and Neel to the grantors in that deed. Conveyance to the said grantors was accomplished by the joint quitclaim deed from the three named persons. The logical inference therefore is that the quitclaim deed was delivered first in order and was not intended as a reconveyance by Lewis of full title conveyed to him by means of the warranty deed. Moreover, Akin and Neel were necessary parties to the quitclaim deed, in order that it might operate to transfer the legal title held by them; whereas they would not be necessary parties if the purpose had been a reconveyance, after the warranty
4. The plaintiff was not himself a bona fide purchaser without notice, because one of the executors of Lewis notified him expressly of Lewis’s claim before he purchased from C. A. Todd Jr. In the circumstances the ground of estoppel relied on by the plaintiff, and stated in the second division above, was not sustained.
The foregoing rulings deal with the controlling questions in the case, and require an affirmance of the judgment overruling the plaintiff’s motion for a new trial. In this view it is unnecessary to decide special grounds of the motion, relating to admissibility of other evidence introduced by the defendants for the purpose of showing notice to subsequent purchasers of the mistake in the warranty deed as to the actual date of its delivery.
Judgment affirmed.