Beck v. Beck

• Decision Date: 29 June 1887
• Parties: BECK v. BECK.
• Court: New Jersey Court of Chancery

10 A. 155

43 N.J.E. 39

BECK

v. BECK.

Court of Chancery of New Jersey.

June 29, 1887.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

On motion to strike out cross-bill. Bill for account.

Theodore Runyon, for the motion. John R. Emery, contra.

VAN FLEET, V. C. This is a suit by a wife against her husband to compel him to account for the rents of certain real estate which she says he has collected as her agent. The parties were married in August, 1854. The complainant holds the legal title to two pieces of real estate in the city of Newark. The first was conveyed to her in August, 1859, and is situate on Springfield avenue. The second was conveyed to her in November, 1877, and is situate on the corner of New and Plane streets. There are buildings on both tracts, which have been almost constantly occupied by tenants since the complainant obtained title. The defendant has collected all the rents, but has neither paid nor accounted to the complainant for them. The complainant, by her bill, says that she authorized the defendant to collect the rents, with the understanding that he should apply them to the payment of taxes and the other necessary annual charges of the premises, and also in making such improvements on the premises as would inure to her benefit, and account to her from time to time for any balance which remained in his hands. The complainant revoked the defendant's agency in October, 1886, but he, notwithstanding, persisted in attempting to collect the rents, and because some of the tenants refused to pay rent to him he instituted legal proceedings to dispossess them. The complainant then brought this suit, asking that the defendant might be required to account for the rents he had already received, and also that he be restrained from making further collections, and from molesting or annoying her tenants. The defendant has answered, denying the complainant's right to an account. He says that he is the real owner of both tracts. His claim in this regard is put upon the ground of a resulting trust. He says that he made the contract of purchase for each tract, and subsequently paid the whole of the purchase money with his own funds, his wife not contributing a penny. He likewise says that he caused the legal title to the lands to be made to his wife, but that he did so without either an agreement or purpose to make a gift to her, or a settlement upon her, and that the lands have always, since she obtained title, been treated and considered as belonging to him, she holding the legal title in trust for him. The defendant puts his right to the rents of the property on the corner of New and Plane streets on an additional ground. He says that property was sold by the city of Newark to enforce an unpaid assessment made against it, for a term of 50 years from the sixteenth day of March, 1871, and that a legal title was subsequently made to the purchaser in execution of the sale, and that he (defendant) became invested with such title on the fifteenth of July, 1878, and thereby acquired a right to the possession and use of this part of the property in controversy superior to any which the complainant can claim. The defendant has also made these facts the basis of a cross-bill in which he asks a decree declaring that the complainant holds the legal title to the lands in question in trust for him, and directing her to convey them to him.

This cross-bill is the subject of the present controversy. The complainant moves to strike it out both on the ground that it is useless and impertinent; useless, because, as her counsel contends, if the facts stated in the cross-bill were set up in the answer alone, and proved, they would constitute, under the answer, as complete and perfect a defense to the ease made by the bill as can be made; impertinent, because the cross-bill seeks to thrust into the case a question entirely foreign to the matter put in litigation by the original bill.

There can be no doubt, I think, that a cross-bill, which merely sets up matter which the defendant may make equally available and effectual as a defense by answer, is demurrable; for in such case the cross-bill is not only unnecessary, but useless. The only purpose it could serve in such case would be to incumber the record, and add to the expense of the litigation. And it is also well settled that a defendant can only use a cross-bill against a complainant as a means of defense. It must therefore be confined to the matter put in litigation by the original bill, and cannot be used by a defendant as a means of obtaining relief against a complainant in respect to a cause of action distinct from and wholly unconnected with the complainant's cause of action. Carpenter v. Gray, 37 N. J. Eq. 389; Kirkpatrick v. Coming, 39 N. J. Eq. 136; Krueger...