186 Ga. 728 | Ga. | 1938
A common-law execution in favor of Otis Watson was levied on described real estate as the property of J. W. Maddox, the defendant in fi. fa. Willie Mae Brown filed a claim. Maddox executed to a bank a note or notes and two security deeds conveying the realty in question. These deeds were executed and recorded in 1928 and 1929, and antedated by several years the judgment on which the fi. fa. of plaintiff is based. By a merger, of banks, the creditor bank was succeeded in title by another bank, to which a renewal note for a balance of the indebtedness was given by Maddox. In May, 1935, shortly after the renewal note became due, Alvin L. Richards, an attorney at law, went to the successor bank with a check drawn by Wilson Shirt Company, the employer of the claimant, and informed the officer of the bank with whom he dealt that the check was to purchase
The contention of the plaintiff is, that the transfers by the bank to the claimant constituted a fictitious and fraudulent transaction; that in truth and in fact the claimant has no interest in the property; that she is holding it for the defendant in fi. fa.; and that her claim was filed for the purpose of protecting Maddox against the levy in favor of his judgment creditor, Watson. In support of this contention the plaintiff relies on the testimony of the claimant herself, that in purchasing this note and the security therefor she was lending money to a man she had never seen and on property she had never seen; and also on the fact that she made vague and conflicting statements as to where she got the money to repay her employer, Wilson Shirt Company, and as to whether she had fully repaid the sum so advanced by that company for her. Other circumstances were that she displayed much ignorance concerning the transaction, and left the matter entirely in the hands of her attorney, Eichards, who was also attorney for Maddox, and was at the same time the friend and attorney of Wilson, the manager of the shirt company. The plaintiff relies additionally on the facts that the evidence shows that on a former trial this claimant, after testifying in the case, dismissed her claim; and that according to her testimony given on the former trial she admitted having executed to Maddox a quitclaim deed conveying the realty in question. Concerning this last contention, just what the claimant did testify, both formerly and in the present case, will sufficiently appear from the following excerpts from the record.
There is no evidence, other than the claimant’s testimony, to show that a quitclaim deed was executed by her to Maddox; and taken as a whole, it would not have authorized a finding that any