Chase v. Chase

• Decision Date: 15 July 1897
• Citation: 37 A. 804,20 R.I. 202
• Parties: CHASE et al. v. CHASE et al.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

37 A. 804

20 R.I. 202

CHASE et al.

v. CHASE et al.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 15, 1897.

Bill by Sarah C. Chase and others against Alfred W. Chase and others to set aside a con veyance. The issues were found in favor of complainants, and respondents moved for a new trial. Bill dismissed.

Darius Baker and P. J. Galvin, for complainants.

Wm. P. Sheffield, for respondents.

STINESS, J. In August, 1877, Joseph Freeborn was the owner of real estate consisting of about four acres of land and a dwelling house in Middletown, where he then lived with his wife, both being elderly people, and the husband paralytic. They had no children, and wished to have some one come to live with and care for them. To this end, after like efforts with others had failed, he proposed to the respondents, then living in Brooklyn, Conn., to give them a deed of the property if they would go there to live and attend to him and his wife as long as either should live. The proposition was accepted, a deed was made reciting the consideration as above, and a lease for life was given to both said Joseph and Harriet Freeborn. Pursuant to this arrangement, the respondents went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Freeborn. Mr. Freeborn died in May, 1880, and his widow, Harriet Freeborn, continued to live upon the place until her death, in October, 1893. During this period of 16 years the respondents remained upon the place in execution of the contract, and attending, more or less, to the wants of the aged people. In October, 1894, the complainants, children of the devisees of Joseph Freeborn, brought this bill to set aside the conveyance, upon the grounds that Joseph Freeborn was mentally incompetent to make the contract, and that the respondents did not properly care for said Freeborn and his wife; so that, the services being valueless, there was a failure of consideration for the deed. Before the death of Mr. Freeborn, he and his wife removed from the house in which the respondents lived, to a small cottage near by, which he had built for greater convenience and retirement, and also for securing a lodging room on the lower floor. So far as appears, this was the voluntary act of Mr. Freeborn, who attended solely to its erection. We do not see in this fact, as is claimed by the complainants, a practical abandonment of the contract, nor such evidence of a failure of consideration as to avoid it upon that ground. If the aged couple preferred to be more by themselves than they could be in the larger house, with another family, and to avoid the necessity of going up and down stairs, they had the right to remove to the cottage. If such a course best suited them, and accorded with the requirements of care and comfort which they wanted, there would be no failure of duty on the part of the respondents on this account.

Issues of fact were framed, to be tried by a Jury, whether Joseph Freeborn was of sufficient mental capacity to understand the nature and consequence of his act in giving the deed of August 16, 1877, to the respondents, and whether he was so influenced by said Harriet Freeborn that the transaction was not his free and voluntary act These issues were found in favor of the complainants, and the respondents moved for a new trial upon the ground that the verdict was against the evidence. On hearing this motion this court suggested the question whether, in view of the apparent laches of the complainants, they could maintain their bill; and this is the question now before us. Laches, in legal significance, is not mere delay, but delay that works a disadvantage to another. So long as parties are in the same condition, it matters little whether one presses a right promptly or slowly, within limits allowed by law; but when, knowing his rights, he takes no step to enforce them until the condition of the other party has, in good faith, become so changed that he cannot be restored to his former state, if the right be then enforced, delay becomes inequitable, and operates as estoppel against the assertion of the right. The disadvantage may come from loss of evidence, change of title, intervention of equities, and other causes; but when a court sees negligence on one side and injury therefrom on the other it is a ground for denial of relief. The rule as thus stated is recognized in the following citations: in Wollaston v. Tribe, L. R. 9 Eq. 44, Lord Romilly said: "Great stress was laid on the lapse of time; but I think nothing of that, because all the persons interested are in the same state now as they were then. If there had been any dealing which had altered the state of matters, that might have raised a question; but there is nothing of the sort" See, also, Daggers v. Van Dyck, 37 N. J. Eq. 130. Sir Barnes Peacock said, in Lindsay v. Hurd, L. R. 5 P. C. 221: "The doctrine of laches in courts of equity is not an arbitrary or technical doctrine. Where it would be practically unjust to give a remedy, either because the party has, by his conduct, done that which might fairly be regarded as equivalent to a waiver of it, or where, by his conduct and neglect, he has, though perhaps not waiving that remedy, yet put the other party in a situation in which it would not be reasonable to place him if the remedy were afterwards to be asserted, in either of these cases lapse of time and delay are most material." In Haff v. Jenney, 54 Mich. 511, 20 N. W. 563, Cooley, C. J., said: "No doubt the relationship is a fact to be considered, and it might well be accepted as an excuse for some delay, not only because of the natural repugnance to making a charge of fraud against a near relative, but also because it might with some reason be hoped that such a fraud would, on reflection, be abandoned, and the fruits of it not claimed. But the delay in this case has been quite beyond what can be excused on any such grounds as these. Jenney, so far as we are informed, has never failed to claim the benefits of the arrangement made in 1868, and the parties now complaining have, for a period longer than that prescribed by statute for barring suit upon any personal demand, abstained from making any effective protest. One could never feel a safe reliance in his conveyances if, after such a lapse of time, they could be suffered to be attacked on a stale claim of fraud. The suggestion in the brief that the complainant, rather than the defendant, has been injured by the delay through the death of witnesses, is a...