Baldwin v. Anderson

• Decision Date: 27 January 1913
• Docket Number: 15,617
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: LIZZIE BALDWIN v. E. L. ANDERSON

60 So. 578

103 Miss. 462

LIZZIE BALDWIN v. E. L. ANDERSON

No. 15,617

Supreme Court of Mississippi

January 27, 1913

APPEAL from the chancery court of Coahoma county, HON. M. E. DENTON chancellor.

Suit by Lizzie Baldwin against E. L. Anderson. From a decree for defendant, complainant appeals.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Reversed and remanded.

Maynard & Fitzgerald and Frank Johnston, attorneys for appellant. Cutrer & Johnson, attorneys for appellee.

No briefs of counsel on either side found in the record.

Argued orally by Frank Johnson, for appellant, and J. W. Cutrer, for appellee.

OPINION

SMITH, C. J.

There is very little conflict in the evidence in this case, from which it appears that on July 15, 1904, appellant, who was an old and ignorant woman, was the owner of the land in controversy, which was incumbered by deed of trust executed by her to the Colonial & United States Mortgage Company on the 12th day of June, 1903, to secure the payment of three hundred and fifty dollars, due January 1, 1909, with ten per cent interest thereon, payable annually on the 1st day of January of each year. The first installment of interest on this note due by appellant to the Mortgage Company was for nineteen dollars and forty-five cents, and became due on January 1, 1904. It was paid by Mr. J. A. Glover, and the note evidencing it was assigned to him by the Mortgage Company. Mr. Glover had secured for appellant the loan from the Mortgage Company, and at the time he paid this interest note still retained in his hands the sum of about fifty dollars of the money obtained from the Mortgage Company by him for her.

On July 15, 1904, Glover falsely represented to appellant that he had paid the note due by her to this company, and that he wanted his money. She told him that she had no money, and that he would have to get his pay out of the land. After some discussion of the matter she executed to Mrs. S. P. Glover, wife of J. A. Glover, a deed to the property, clearly with the intention simply of securing Glover in the collection of the money which she supposed he had paid out for her. Glover promised to let her live on the land, and to feed and clothe her. The consideration recited in the deed to this land, which was duly recorded, was ten dollars cash, and "the payment of the debt due by me to the Colonial and United States Mortgage Company for three hundred and fifty dollars." On July 23, 1904, Mrs. Glover and her husband executed to the Planter's Bank a deed of trust on this land to secure an indebtedness of two hundred and fifty dollars. On June 7, 1905, appellee purchased the land from Mrs. Glover for the sum of four hundred and seventy-seven dollars and eighty cents in cash, and agreed to pay off and discharge the two mortgages then on the land, which, together with the four hundred and seventy-seven dollars and eighty cents paid in cash, amounted to the sum of one thousand dollars. At this time appellant was living upon the land, but a tenant of Glover, one Morgan, was also living upon it, and in the house formerly occupied by appellant, she having, after executing her deed to Mrs. Glover, moved into another and smaller cabin. Afterwards, appellee paid off and discharged both of these mortgages. The rent from the land, probably for the year 1903, and certainly for the year 1904, was collected by Glover, and thereafter by appellee. The bill filed in the court below by appellant set up, among others, the foregoing facts, and prayed that the deeds executed by her to Mrs. Glover and by Mrs. Glover to appellee be cancelled as clouds upon her title. Appellee's defense is that he was a bona fide purchaser of the property without notice of any claim of appellant thereto. On final hearing the bill was dismissed, and from the decree of the court so doing this appeal is taken.

Appellee was without actual notice of the claim of appellant to the equitable ownership of this land at the time of his purchase thereof. But appellant contends that he must be charged with notice thereof for two reasons: First, because at the time of his purchase she was in possession of the land; and, second, because the consideration recited in her deed to Mrs. Glover is so grossly inadequate as to charge him with the duty of inquiring the reason therefor.

Assuming that appellant was in possession of this land within the meaning of the rule invoked by her, she is still not within the protection thereof. In Hafter v Strange, 65 Miss. 323, 3 So. 190, 7 Am. St. Rep. 659, it was stated by the court that, while the general rule is that possession of land by one claiming some interest therein is notice to the world of the character and extent thereof, a well defined exception to this rule is that...