Beck v. Uhrich

• Decision Date: 01 January 1852
• Citation: 13 Pa. 636
• Parties: Beck versus Uhrich.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

13 Pa. 636

Beck versus Uhrich.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

ERROR to the Common Pleas of Dauphin county.

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The case was argued by Carson and Rawn, for plaintiff in error, Beck. By Boas and McCormick, for Uhrich.

The opinion of the Court was delivered by COULTER, J.

The error assigned as to the reception of testimony, is of no account. The evidence received was a document which composed part of the res gestæ, conduced to illustrate the case, and is opposed by no canon of the law. Evidence is for the purpose of shedding light on the transaction, but sometimes the objections to evidence would raise a strong implication that the design was to produce dim twilight. The whole case turns upon this category: was Uhrich, in fact and in law, a trustee of the land sold to Beck, or was he the owner in his own right? It is true, that Beck paid two hundred and fifty dollars to Uhrich, who was the apparent legal owner; and if he purchased without notice of the trust, he would have an interest in the land to that extent, for which he is perhaps more than compensated long ago by the rents, issues and profits. But Beck himself makes defence to the payment of the bonds, upon the ground that plaintiff cannot make a good title, and he cannot be permitted to blow hot and cold.

Uhrich was but a trustee. The equitable title resides in the heirs of John Uhrich, deceased.

If one man buy land with the money of another man, even though he stand in no fiduciary character to the person whose money has been used, and takes the legal title in his own name, there is a resulting trust, and the legal title is a mere naked form, and only evidence of title in favor of the cestui que trust, because his money paid for it. In this case, Joseph Uhrich, the plaintiff, was one of the administrators of John Uhrich, deceased, bound by principles of law to take care of the funds of the estate, and husband them for the creditors in the first place, and afterwards for the heirs. Crum, the other administrator, and Joseph Uhrich, appear to have acted in concert and harmony, and the result was, that contrary to the fidelity which they owed to the heirs, they caused the land to be sold, purchased themselves, paid for it with the funds of the estate, never advanced a dollar of their own, took the title in the name of Joseph Uhrich, who now claims its product in his own right. It is possible, that when the sale was made, Joseph intended to be honest, and he has an...