Baines v. Clarke
Decision Date | 05 May 1884 |
Citation | 28 L.Ed. 599,4 S.Ct. 671,111 U.S. 789 |
Parties | BAINES, Adm'r, etc., v. CLARKE and others |
Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
C. Bogges and S. A. Miller, for appellant.
Wm. Pinckney Whyte, for appellees.
On the second of February, 1874, John D. Lewis conveyed to George W. Norris and Henry Clarke three certain tracts of land embraced within the exterior boundaries of a survey of 40,000 acres granted by the commonwealth of Virginia to Jacob Skyles on the eleventh of July, 1798. The instrument by which the conveyance was made was signed by both parties, and contained not only a grant of the land, but an agreement on the part of the grantees for the payment of the purchase money. That agreement was as follows:
The cash installment of $50,000 was paid, as was also the installment of $25,000 due on the first of October, 1874. Default having been made in the payment of the amount falling due on the first of April, 1875, and the interest maturing July 1, 1875, Lewis filed this bill in the circuit court of Kanawha county, West Virginia, on the seventeenth of August, 1875, to enforce his vendor's lien. The survey made pursuant to the agreement showed that there were within the exterior boundaries of the tracts conveyed 39,000 acres, but it is not claimed that payment is to be made for more than 36,244 acres, the title having failed to all the rest.
The suits pending at the time the sale was made involved the title to 19,716 acres, but of this amount only 165 acres were in the actual possession of any one adversely to Lewis. On the twenty-fourth of November, 1874, the reference which had been made of the suits to arbitration, mentioned in the agreement, was set aside by order of the court, on account of the failure of the arbitrators to act. At the June term, 1875, of the court a special jury was summoned for the trial of the causes on the twenty-second of the month, but, before that day arrived, the court adjourned for the term. In January, 1876, one of the suits was tried, but the jury failing to agree, the suits were all continued. On the thirtieth of May, 1876, another agreement for submission to arbitration was entered into, and on the twenty-fourth of August, 1876, an award was filed, but for some reason it was not confirmed by the court until December, 1877, when judgments were entered in accordance with its requirements. On the twenty-third of January, 1880, the several plaintiffs in the ejectment suits applied to the court of appeals of West Virginia for the allowance of writs of error to review these judgments, but the applications were all refused on that day.
There is in the record evidence of the recovery of a judgment, in the district court of the United States for the district of West Virginia, by Coles P. Huntington, on the thirteenth of October, 1875, against John Lewis Taylor, for the recovery of the possession of 400 acres of land. The judgment was recovered by default, and it does not appear when the...
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