Allen v. Allen

• Decision Date: 23 February 1892
• Citation: 48 Minn. 462,51 N.W. 473
• Parties: ALLEN v ALLEN ET AL.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

48 Minn. 462

51 N.W. 473

ALLENvALLEN ET AL.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Feb. 23, 1892.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

1. A covenant of seisin in a deed of real property is broken where the covenantor has not the possession, the right of possession, and the complete legal title.

2. Where there has been a failure to name a grantee in one of the deeds upon which a defendant, in an action upon the covenant of seisin, rests his title, parol testimony that one of the defendant's grantors was the intended grantee in such deed is inadmissible for the purpose of establishing the legal title to the property in said intended grantee.

Appeal from district court, Hennepin county; HOOKER, Judge.

Action by Charles T. Allen against Elliot C. Allen and others on a covenant of seisin. Judgment for defendants. Plaintiff appeals. Reversed.

S. R. Child, for appellant. Hazen M. Parker, for respondents.

COLLINS, J.

The instrument, executed and acknowledged by Willis G. Baker and wife, in which these persons and S. B. Loye were named as parties of the first part, was fatally defective as a conveyance of real property, because no one was therein named as of the second part, and no person could take anything by it. In every grant there must be a grantor, a grantee, and a thing granted, and a deed wanting in either essential is invalid. A grantee is as necessary to the validity of a grant as that there should be a grantor or a thing granted. Garnett v. Garnett, 7 T. B. Mon. 545;Whitaker v. Miller, 83 Ill. 381. When these defendants by warranty deed with full covenants, except as to a particularly described mortgage, conveyed the premises in question to plaintiff, they had not been invested with the legal title, for that remained in Baker when he failed in an attempt to convey. For this reason there was a breach in defendants' covenant of seisin, for “seisin” means, ex vi termini, the whole legal title, and nothing short of it will satisfy. A covenant of seisin is broken if the covenantor has not the possession, the right of possession, and the complete legal title. Fitzhugh v. Croghane, 2 J. J. Marsh. 429; Lockwood v. Sturdivant, 6 Conn. 373. And the covenant was broken upon the execution of defendants' deed, vesting in the plaintiff an immediate cause of action. Kimball v. Bryant, 25 Minn. 496. The court below seems to have held that the legal title to the premises passed from Baker to Loye upon the execution of the purported deed by Mr. and Mrs. Baker, and this view must have been based upon the conclusion of the court...