Baker v. Pyatt
| Decision Date | 26 October 1886 |
| Docket Number | 11,216 |
| Citation | 9 N.E. 112,108 Ind. 61 |
| Parties | Baker et al. v. Pyatt |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Vanderburgh Circuit Court.
Judgment affirmed, with costs.
A Gilchrist, C. H. Butterfield, -- Patterson and H. G. Taylor for appellants.
C. A DeBruler and E. Gough, for appellee.
Appellee brought this action to have his deed corrected, and his title to the lands described in the complaint quieted, as against all claims by appellant. The deed was made to appellee by his and appellant's father, a short time before his death, and it is claimed that by mistake the land intended to be conveyed is not described in the deed, but other land which the father did not own.
The first paragraph of the complaint asks for a quieting of the title, and the second for a reformation of the deed. There is a third paragraph in the complaint, but it is apparent that the finding and judgment in appellee's favor rest upon the first and second paragraphs, if not upon the second alone. The general rule is, that where the judgment rests upon two paragraphs, one of which is fatally bad, as against the demurrer below, the judgment can not stand, but must be reversed. Pennsylvania Co. v. Holderman, 69 Ind. 18; Ethel v. Batchelder, 90 Ind. 520; Louisville, etc., R. W. Co. v. Lockridge, 93 Ind. 191; Lang v. Oppenheim, 96 Ind. 47; Caylor v. Roe, 99 Ind. 1; City of Logansport v. LaRose, 99 Ind. 117; Rowe v. Peabody, 102 Ind. 198, 1 N.E. 353; Walker v. Heller, 104 Ind. 327, 3 N.E. 114.
It is contended that the second paragraph is bad as against the demurrer, because neither the deed, nor a copy of it, was filed with it, or in any way made a part thereof. That contention is sustained by the case of Overly v. Tipton, 68 Ind. 410. Upon this point, that case has neither been approved nor questioned in subsequent cases in this court, although in some cases the copy of the deed filed with the pleading has, without question by court or counsel, been treated as a part of the pleading. Toops v. Snyder, 70 Ind. 554.
The case has support from the case of Plowman v. Shidler, 36 Ind. 484.
We do not find it necessary here to enter upon a re-examination of the question decided in the case of Overly v. Tipton, supra. After a careful examination, we have concluded that the merits of the cause have been fairly determined, and that, therefore, under our statute, the judgment should not be reversed simply because a copy of the deed was not filed with the second paragraph of the complaint. R. S. 1881, section 345; Sohn v. Cambern, 106 Ind. 302, 6 N.E. 813. The failure to file a copy of the deed, if that rendered the paragraph defective, was a matter somewhat formal in its character. It was a defect that would have been cured by verdict, had there been no demurrer, and such a defect as the above the statute requires shall be disregarded, where a cause has been fairly determined.
It is contended further by appellant's counsel, that there is no averment in the second paragraph of the complaint showing that the alleged misdescription in the deed was the result of the mutual mistake of the parties, and notwithstanding the general averment in that paragraph that the deed was made upon a valuable consideration, the special averments show that it was purely a voluntary deed, resting upon no valuable consideration whatever; and, further, that the alleged mistake was one of law, and not of fact.
It is averred in the paragraph under consideration, that appellee and appellant Martha (the other appellant being her husband) are brother and sister; that their father, Nathan Pyatt, who owned eighteen hundred acres of land, was desirous of dividing it among his children, taking into account advancements that each had received, and that a short time before his death, in consideration of natural love and affection, and the sum of twenty-six hundred dollars paid to him, he executed deeds to each one of the children, intending thereby to convey to each a certain and proper portion of the lands; that each one took immediate possession of his or her land so conveyed, or supposed to have been conveyed, and has since paid the taxes thereon, etc.
It is further alleged that after appellee had taken possession of the land (describing it) given to him, and after the death of the father, he discovered that his deed did not describe his land, but, by the mistake of the scrivener, had been made to describe other lands (describing them) which his father did not own; that the land first described, and of which he was in possession, was the land which the father intended to give to him, and the land which he, and all the other children, supposed he was receiving.
The use of the word "give" indicates that the land was to be conveyed to appellee as a gift simply; but the use of that word, in the way and in the connection in which it is used, would not justify a holding that there was not any valuable consideration at all. So far as the conveyance was based upon love and affection, it may be said to have been a gift, but there is a positive averment that the conveyance was made not only in consideration of love and affection, and by way of dividing the land among the children, but also in consideration of twenty-six hundred dollars paid to the grantor. The averments taken together, we think, are sufficient upon the subject of consideration to make the paragraph good as against the demurrer.
It is settled, that before equity will interfere for the correction of a mistake in a deed, it must be made to appear that the mistake was a mutual mistake, and a mistake of fact, and not of law.
It is shown by the averments in the second paragraph of the complaint, as we have seen, that the father's intention was to divide the whole of his lands among his children; that he did not own the land described in appellee's deed, but did own that which was taken possession of by him subsequent to, and in pursuance of, the deed to him; that the land so possessed by him was the land which the father intended to convey to him, and that which he, and all the other children, supposed he was receiving; that the deed does not describe the land thus intended to be conveyed, and which appellee supposed he was receiving, but, by the mistake of the scrivener, was made to describe other lands which the father did not own; and that appellee did not discover the mistake until after he had taken possession of the land, and after the death of his father.
These averments clearly show that the deed is not as the parties intended it should be, because it does not describe the land which the father intended to convey, and which appellee supposed was being conveyed to him. It is thus made apparent that the description in the deed is the result of a mistake, and that that mistake was mutual upon the part of the grantor and grantee, as their purpose was to have such a description in the deed as would properly describe, and carry the land which appellee subsequently possessed. And thus, too, it is made to appear, that but for their mutual mistake, and the mistake of the scrivener, the land intended to be conveyed would have been properly described. It is not averred that the grantor did not know what description was inserted in the deed, nor, indeed, is it averred that appellee was ignorant of the description so inserted. It is averred that he did not discover the mistake in the description of his land until after he had taken possession of it, and until after the death of his father, but this does not amount to an averment that he was ignorant of the description actually inserted in the deed.
It must therefore be assumed, as against the pleader, that both appellee and the father, at the time the deed was executed, knew what description was inserted therein. What, then, was their mistake? Was it a mistake of fact? And if so, was it such a mistake as will warrant a reformation of the description by a court of equity? Or was it a mistake of law against which equity will afford no relief? In our judgment, the mistake was in no sense a mistake of law, because, as a matter of law, the description in the deed was sufficient to have carried the land described, had it belonged to the father. It will be found, upon a close examination of the cases, that the mistakes, denominated mistakes of law, were cases where the descriptions used were so defective as to convey nothing, and that the mistakes of the parties were in supposing them to be sufficient; in other words, mistakes as to the legal sufficiency of the description used.
It was held in the case of Armstrong v. Short, 95 Ind. 326, that the mortgage could not be reformed, because the description of the lands was defective and insufficient, and because the mistake was as to the legal sufficiency of the description, and, therefore, a mistake of law. The same may be said of the cases of Easter v. Severin, 64 Ind. 375, and Easter v. Severin, 78 Ind. 540. See, also, Nelson v. Davis, 40 Ind. 366; Nicholson v. Caress, 59 Ind. 39; Heavenridge v. Mondy, 49 Ind. 434.
The mistake here, we think, was a mistake of fact. The purpose was to describe a tract of land owned by the father, and which he intended, and was attempting, to convey to the son. The mistake was in applying to that tract a description that did not describe it at all, but an entirely different tract. They supposed that the description used in the deed described the tract intended to be conveyed, and in that they were mistaken. Whether or not the description used covered the tract intended to be conveyed, we think, was a question of fact, and as to that fact there was a mistake. It was a fact, too, about which the parties might easily be mistaken, without being guilty of such negligence as ought to...
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