Blackwell v. Ryan

• Decision Date: 14 April 1884
• Parties: BLACKWELL v. RYAN.
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court

21 S.C. 112

BLACKWELL

v.RYAN.

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Apr. 14th, 1884.

1. In suits for specific performance, the contract must be established by competent and satisfactory proof, such as is clear, definite, and certain. The Circuit judge sustained in his findings of fact.

2. A vendor has the right in equity to claim specific performance of a contract for the sale of land, and in such proceeding to have decree for payment of unpaid purchase money or a sale of the land therefor, but he is not entitled to recover rents and profits from the vendee.

3. To such an equitable proceeding, the statute of limitations as such has no proper application.

4. A subsequent agreement in this case between the vendee and the administrator of the vendor held not to have changed the relative condition of the parties.

5. One who goes into possession of land under a contract to purchase it, cannot acquire title against the vendor by the statute of limitations, until payment of the purchase money; neither can the widow of such vendee after his death.

6. Although there was in this case a positive and unequivocal assertion of adverse right made to the vendor by the widow of the vendee, still the bar of the statute cannot as such be interposed to a proceeding on the equity side of the court for specific performance of an executory contract.

7. But where, as in this case, there has been long and unexplained delay, the original parties are all dead, the widow of the vendee has been in uninterrupted possession for more than fourteen years asserting exclusive ownership, and other circumstances are adverse to the claim, a Court of Equity will not decree specific performance of the contract in favor of the vendor. The Court of Equity, in exercising discretion, will follow, as far as practicable, the analogies of the law.

Before FRASER, J., Edgefield, June, 1883.

The opinion fully states the case. The Circuit decree, omitting such matters as are repeated in the opinion, was as follows:

Putting together the testimony of Mr. Griffin as to the admission of James Blackwell to him of the amount repaid to him by B. Jabez Ryan, the testimony of Mrs. Ryan, (somewhat indefinite it is true,) as to the amount paid on his bond out of her interest in the estate, real and personal, of John Dobey, and the fact that this agreement between Landon Tucker, the administrator of James Blackwell, and B. Jabez Ryan, carefully provided for the payment of the moneys paid by him on said bond, and that the same shall be first paid out of the sale of the hotel, and makes no mention of any amount due to his intestate's estate from payments made by him in his life-time, I must conclude that nothing remains unpaid by B. Jabez Ryan except the amount paid on the bond by Landon Tucker, $500 February 7th, 1860, and $2,000 July 7th, 1863, and the interest thereon. The $500 payment was certainly not made with reference to Confederate money, as it was before the war. The $2,000 was made on a bond executed long before the war, and extinguished it pro tanto at a specie valuation, and B. Jabez Ryan, in his agreement with Landon Tucker, never set up any such claim as that it was subject to be scaled.

The rental value of the property for 1868 to 1870 was about $300 per annum; from that time to the present about $200 per annum; but I do not think that the defendants are in any event accountable for rent. The plaintiffs, if entitled to anything, have a right to the unpaid money and interest, and to have the land sold for the payment. They cannot have interest and rent both.

Mrs. Frances Ryan, the defendant, widow of B. Jabez Ryan, and her children, have been in the possession and in the receipts of the rents and profits ever since the death of her husband. If this was all, I would think that the plaintiffs would have a right to have the hotel and lot sold for the payment of the money paid out by Landon Tucker, and the interest, under the agreement between himself and B. Jabez Ryan, to be divided between Landon Tucker and the heirs of James Blackwell in such manner as they have seen fit to agree to amongst themselves. Soon, however, after the death of B. Jabez Ryan, some three months, Mrs. Ryan says in her testimony: “I had a conversation with Landon Tucker. He wanted me to sign an instrument of writing about this property. I told him it was my property, and that I would not leave it unless by fire or death.”

An uncompleted contract to convey is an equitable mortgage. Adams Eq., 123. The land becomes in equity the property of the vendee, and the purchase money that of the vendor. *** On the death of the vendor, it will pass to his executor, for whom the devisee or heir will be a trustee. Ibid, 140, 141. If a man has entered into a valid contract for the purchase of land, he is treated in equity as the equitable owner of the land, and the vendor is treated as the owner of the money, and the purchase money is treated as the personal estate of the vendor, and goes as such to his personal representatives. 2 Story Eq., § 790.

Landon Tucker, then, is the person who, either in his own right or as administrator, was competent to deal with the payment of it. He alone could give a valid receipt for the same, and he had a right to enforce this lien on the hotel and lot as in case of an ordinary mortgage, without making the personal representatives a party, and proceeding against the heirs alone, unless a decree is sought against the personal representatives. Mrs. Ryan and her children, in their answer, set up title in themselves and claim the benefit of the statute of limitations.

The Supreme Court of the United States liken the relations of landlord and tenant to the relations of mortgagors and mortgagees, and consider that there is no more propriety in refusing a lessee, who has openly disavowed the title of the landlord, the protection of the statute, than there is any other fraudulent trustee, from the time the fraud is discovered. There is no rule in law or equity which makes it a matter of duty to do so. All the cases, however, show that every presumption is in favor of possession in subordination to the title of the true owner, and that the adverse possession must be made out, not by any inference, but by clear and positive proof of a claim on the part of the tenants and of an acquiescence on the part of the landlord who is knowing to the same. Ang. Lim. (6 edit.), § 444, citing Zeller v. Eckert, 4 How., 289.

In the case referred to, the court seems to have been considering the case of a tenant and landlord, but says that they are like the relations of mortgagor and mortgagee, and thence deduces the principle which is applied to the former. It seems to be a wholesome rule to be applied in all cases where parties occupy similar relations. In the case of Norton v. Lewis, 3 S. C., 31, the question of the right to set up the statute of limitations against a mortgage was reopened and the plea was not allowed in that case. The Supreme Court in that case says that the defendants “do not allege anything in the character of their possession amounting to an active opposition to the claim of the mortgagee, but rely on the naked fact of holding as purchasers under title derived from the mortgagor.” It is true that the court does not say what would have been the effect of active opposition to the mortgagee, but enough is said to prevent that case from being an authority, that in no case can the statute of limitations be set up against a mortgage.

In the case before me, Mrs. Ryan very emphatically claimed the property, and announced to the creditor her determination not to give it up, and that she claimed it as her own. She has continued with her children in possession, and she is in the receipt of the rents and profits more than ten years consecutively immediately before the commencement of this action, February 27th, 1882. Landon Tucker had a right then, early in 1868, under his agreement with B. Jabez Ryan, to the rents and profits of the hotel and lot, and has allowed fourteen years to pass without taking any steps by law to assert his rights, and that, too, after he had been informed in a most positive manner by Mrs. Ryan that she claimed the hotel and lot as her own, and did not intend to leave it. He could have forced a sale after January 1st, 1869.

The question is not here made as to the liability of Elbert Ryan as administrator of B. Jabez Ryan, and no judgment will be rendered upon it; but I think that the plea of the statute of limitations set up by the defendants against the sale of the house and lot to pay any alleged balance due to Landon Tucker, either immediately or as administrator of James Blackwell, deceased, must be sustained. It is therefore ordered and adjudged that the complaint be dismissed.

Messrs. W. T. Gary and Ernest Gary, for appellants.

Messrs. Butler & Simkins and Bettis & Wardlaw, contra.

The opinion of the court was delivered by

MR. JUSTICE MCGOWAN.

In November, 1856, the real estate of John Dobey, previously deceased intestate, was sold by the commissioner in equity for Edgefield district for partition under orders in the case of John L. Dobey et al. v. Matilda Dobey et al. At this sale, B. Jabez Ryan bid off the Planters' Hotel at the price of $6,510, payable half in one year and the other half in two years; but he could not comply with the terms of sale, and his friend, James Blackwell, assumed the bid, gave bond with surety for the amount, and, as we suppose as a matter of course (although it is not expressly stated), took title from the commissioner.

At the time of the sale, or soon after, there was a written agreement entered into between Blackwell and Ryan that the latter should have the hotel if he would pay the bond given by Blackwell for the purchase money; and upon that being done, he, Blackwell, “would execute good and sufficient title to said hotel and premises unto the said Ryan.” This paper is lost; but as Ryan afterwards...