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 |
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.
Wm. P. Sheffield, for respondents.
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: 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: In Haff v. Jenney, 54 Mich. 511, 20 N. W. 563, Cooley, C. J., said: ...
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