Andrews v. Andrews

• Decision Date: 25 February 1889
• Parties: ANDREWS v. ANDREWS.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

17 A. 166

81 Me. 337

ANDREWS

v. ANDREWS.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Feb. 25, 1889.

Report from supreme judicial court, Cumberland county.

Bill in equity, heard on bill, answer, and proofs. The bill was brought by Frances E. Andrews against Charles A. Andrews, to reform a deed of real estate, given by the plaintiff to the defendant, October 14, 1884, the plaintiff claiming that a certain quarry and three small lots of land were included in the description in the deed under a mutual mistake, and that they should have been excepted therefrom. The facts are fully stated in the opinion.

Frank & Larrabee, for plaintiff. C. A. Strout and H. W. Gage, for defendant.

VIRGIN, J. The plaintiff seeks to reform her warranty deed to the defendant, upon the ground that its metes and bounds include, not only her homestead farm, which alone she sold and intended to convey, but also, by reason of a misapprehension of its true boundaries, three other small adjoining parcels of land, together with a granite ledge, all of which prior to 1867 were a part of the original farm, but were severally sold and conveyed to various grantees by the original owner, one of the plaintiff's early predecessors in title. The office of a description of the land in a deed of conveyance is to furnish and perpetuate the means of identifying the premises conveyed. And, if the language is precisely what the parties intended it to be when they adopted it, nevertheless, if back of that they through ignorance or misapprehension mistakenly believed that it correctly delineated the actual boundaries of the premises intended to be conveyed, the mistake is one of fact, and not of law. Burr v. Hutchinson, 61 Me. 514; Bush v. Hicks, 60 N. Y. 298; Baker v. Pyeatt, 6 Wkly. Rep. 283. To sustain her bill under the equity head of mistake, with no allegation of fraudulent or other inequitable conduct on the part of the defendant, the plaintiff must prove that the deed not only misdescribes the real estate which she sold and intended to convey, but also that which the defendant understood he purchased,—that the mistake was mutual. Butman v. Hussey, 30 Me. 263; Burr v. Hutchinson, supra; Bank v. Insurance Co., 62 Me. 519. In other words, that, when the deed was executed, both parties understood it to convey the identical land which the bill alleges it ought and would have conveyed had not the alleged mistake occurred; and that the reformation, in some, at least, of the particulars alleged, is necessary, in order that the deed may correctly speak the actual intention of both parties, and thereby perfect and perpetuate their real agreement, which the deed in its present form fails to express. Lumbert v. Hill, 41 Me. 475; Adams v. Stevens, 49 Me. 362; Young v. McGown, 62 Me. 56; Andrews v. Insurance Co., 3 Mason, 6; Kilmer v. Smith, 77 N. T. 226, 232; Insurance Co. v. Davis, 131 Mass. 317. For, if the plaintiff only was mistaken, a reformation obviating her mistake would only result in the inequitable consequence of shifting from the plaintiff to the defendant the burden of abiding by a contract which he never made. Hence, if the parties differently understood the original agreement as to the identity of the premises, the relief would take on the form of cancellation, rather than reformation. Young v. McGown, 62 Me. 56, 61.

1. As to the reformation sought in relation to the granite. Miltimore Watts owned the farm from 1846 to 1880, when he conveyed it to the plaintiff's former husband by a deed which by metes and bounds included, not only the farm as it then existed, but also the three small adjoining parcels of land, and the granite ledge of 30 to 40 acres before mentioned, all of which parcels and ledge he had in 1852, 1853, and 1867 conveyed to various grantees. The plaintiff being ignorant of the true bounds of the farm, and knowing that her husband had sold off none of it until the day before his decease in May, 1882, when he conveyed it to her, fully believed that the Watts deed to her husband correctly described the farm as it then existed. Her husband's deed to her afforded no information as to its limits, the description therein being simply, "my [his] homestead farm on which I now reside, and formerly known as the 'Miltimore Watts Farm.'" She confidently relied upon the supposed accuracy of the deed of Watts, (her cousin,) and beyond all doubt executed her deed to the defendant under this mistaken belief. It would be absurd to suppose that she knowingly undertook to warrant and defend the title to various parcels of land of which she had no title, especially as she took back a mortgage of the same premises to secure two-thirds of the entire purchase money, some of which was not payable till seven years thereafter. And, if we felt equally certain that this mistake as to the granite was mutual, we should not hesitate to sustain the bill in respect of that, at least.

Was the mistake mutual? In 1867, Watts by his unconditional warranty deed conveyed to one Goss "all the granite" in some 40 acres of the farm, "excepting and reserving so much thereof as may be necessary for the cellar and underpinning of a new barn and shed," with the right at all times to enter and remove it, and a right of way therefrom through the pasture to the highway. Goss worked the ledge for a few years, when, the granite proving too soft for other use than that of walls, he suspended all further operations thereon...