O'brien v. Boland
| Decision Date | 02 September 1896 |
| Citation | 44 N.E. 602,166 Mass. 481 |
| Parties | O'BRIEN v. BOLAND. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
Charles
W. Bartlett, Sherman L. Whipple, and William R. Sears, for plaintiff.
Harriman & Daggett and G. Philip Wardner, for defendant.
The offer was made on Saturday, December 2, 1893, and the withdrawal on the following Monday. Before making the offer the defendant sought and had two or three interviews with the plaintiff for the purpose of selling the property to him. The defendant shortly before had been in a state of mental depression, due to an accident which occurred some years before, and to attacks of dyspepsia. Sometimes he was very much depressed, at other times excited. Sometimes he was in a dazed and absent-minded condition, and at other times very despondent. On the Saturday mentioned the parties came to an understanding, and went to the office of an attorney who had acted in various matters for the plaintiff, and there the written offer was prepared by the attorney, and was signed sealed, and delivered by the defendant. Before going to the office the parties drank several times together, at the plaintiff's invitation. But the report finds that the defendant was not intoxicated, and that he was mentally responsible for his acts, and understood the contents of the offer, and that no fraud was practiced. The price named in the offer was $26,000,--$3,000 less than the value of the property. After making the offer, and before the attempted withdrawal, the defendant received a better offer. When the offer was withdrawn it had not been accepted. Four days afterwards the plaintiff's attorney wrote to the defendant that the plaintiff would purchase in accordance with the offer. The letter made an appointment for closing the transaction for the following Monday, was silent as to the revocation, and assumed that the defendant was bound to convey. The defendant received this letter on December 8, and on the next day retained counsel, who sent him to the office of the plaintiff's attorney for his deed, which had been left there; but, instead of getting the deed, the defendant promised to be ready on the next Monday to pass the papers. The offer was to sell a block of uncompleted tenement houses to finish them, and to guaranty them free from all lien or incumbrance except a mortgage for $10,000; and, further, to give a good bond, in the penal sum of $20,000, for the performance of the defendant's agreements. The defendant could not furnish such a bond. While the defendant, when he made the offer, understood its contents, and was mentally responsible, and no fraud was practiced upon him, the bargain was a hard one, in the inadequacy of the price, and was beyond his power to carry out. The plaintiff shows no reason why he would not be fully compensated by damages in an action at law. The defendant contends that the inadequacy of the price, and his own depressed mental and physical condition, should induce a court of equity, in the exercise of a sound discretion, to decline to enforce specific performance. But the substance of the report is that the bargain was voluntarily and understandingly made by a sick man, who himself sought the plaintiff, and who attempted to withdraw his offer after having received another which he thought better. The finding that no fraud was practiced negatives the idea that advantage was taken of his infirmities. The inadequacy of price--$3,000 in a sale of property worth $29,000--is not gross, the sale being of unfinished dwellings. We cannot say that these matters preclude the plaintiff from equitable relief. Railroad Corp. v. Babcock, 6 Metc. (Mass.) 346; Lee v. Kirby, 104 Mass. 421; Curran v. Water-Power Co., 116 Mass. 90; Thaxter v. Sprague, 159 Mass. 397, 34 N.E. 541. See Railroad Co. v. Bartlett, 10 Gray, 384; Love v. Sortwell, 124 Mass. 446; Chute v. Quincy, 156 Mass. 189, 30 N.E. 550.
The defendant contends that, because he could not have compelled the plaintiff to buy...
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