Crilly v. Morris

• Decision Date: 12 September 1945
• Docket Number: 8684
• Citation: 19 N.W.2d 836,70 S.D. 584
• Parties: M. A. CRILLY, Administrator of the Estate of Joanna Held, Deceased, and Margaret Riethmann, Respondent, v. S. FRED MORRIS and Isaac A. Morris, Appellants, and Clara Held Reid, Intervenor.
• Court: South Dakota Supreme Court

70 SD 584, 19 NW2d 836 (1945)

M. A. CRILLY,

Administrator of the Estate of Joanna Held, Deceased and Margaret Riethmann Respondent v. S. FRED MORRIS and Isaac A. Morris,

Appellants,

and Clara Held Reid, Intervenor.

South Dakota Supreme Court

Appeal from Circuit Court, Pennington County, SD

Hon. R. C. Bakewell, Judge

#8684—Affirmed

See also 70 SD 153, 15 NW2d 742

T. B. Thorson, Rapid City, SD

Percy Helm, Sturgis, SD

Attorneys for Defendants and Appellants.

H. F. Fellows, Whiting & Wilson, Rapid City, SD

Attorneys for Plaintiffs and Respondents.

Thomas G. Wall, Sturgis, SD

Attorney for Intervening Plaintiff and Respondent.

Opinion Filed Sep 12, 1945

SMITH, Presiding Judge.

Joanna Held died intestate without issue in May 1941. She had formerly owned a residence and its furnishings in Rapid City, South Dakota, and an eight hundred acre ranch a short distance from that city. After her death the defendant Isaac A. Morris claimed title to the residence and its furnishings under a bill of sale and a deed from the deceased dated October 29, 1935, and to an acreage of the ranch under a deed from deceased dated March 22, 1938, and the defendant S. Fred Morris claimed title to the remainder of the ranch under a deed from the deceased dated March 22, 1938. This action was commenced by the administrator of the estate of Joanna Held, deceased. The complaint avers that the above described transfers were void for the reason, among others, that they were not delivered. Thereafter Clara Held Reid was permitted to intervene. By her complaint in intervention she joined in the allegations of the complaint of the administrator, and asserted an equitable claim to the property of the deceased under an alleged contract made for her benefit during her infancy between her father, on the one part, and Joanna Held and her late husband, E.F. Held, on the other part, wherein Mr. and Mrs. Held agreed to adopt the intervenor and to make her their sole heir. Subsequently, one Margaret Riethmann was added as a party plaintiff. The order adding this plaintiff discloses that the defendants’ and Margaret Riethmann’s names appeared upon the list of heirs of Joanna Held in the probate proceeding and it provided that Margaret Riethmann should represent the interests of all of the heirs of Joanna Held, excepting the defendants. The answers of the defendants asserted title to the property under the described transfers, and the answers of the plaintiffs and of the defendants to the complaint in intervention denied that Joanna Held and E. F. Held had agreed to adopt the intervenor, or to make her their sole heir. The issues were tried to the court and were resolved in favor of the intervenor. After the court had announced its decision, it was disclosed that subsequent to the commencement of the action, the plaintiff Margaret Riethmann and the intervenor, Clara Held Reid, had entered into an agreement to share in the property in the event that either should prevail in the litigation and the court entered judgment accordingly. See State ex rel. Reid v. Circuit Court SD 286, 9 NW2d 699. The defendants have appealed from the judgment so entered.

The principal contention of the defendants is that the trial court arbitrarily disbelieved and disregarded uncontradicted testimony of the defendants and of Pearl Morris, the wife of S. Fred Morris, in finding that the bill of sale was forged and that the described deeds and bill of sale were never delivered. We are not required to speculate as to the reasons which prompted the trial court in directing counsel to prepare “a specific finding that the testimony of Pearl, Fred, and Isaac Morris is not worthy of credit, and is not believed and that such witnesses are by all of the evidence proven to have no credibility.” To reveal the reasoning of the trial court, we quote at length from its memorandum decision:

“Before approaching the evidence on the question of the claimed delivery of these conveyances it seems necessary to consider the relationship of the several parties concerned in this proceeding. The evidence discloses that Joanna Held, the grantor, was at the time of her death in May 1941, the widow of E. F. (Fritz) Held, who preceded her in death in 1929. The Helds .had for many years lived in lower Rapid Valley in Pennington County and were engaged in ranching. They were successful and prosperous and accumulated a large amount of land, some of which was under irrigation and highly productive and the balance “dry land”, and were people of standing in the community. They were childless, but in ‘97 or ‘98, they took intervenor, then about three years old, into their home where she lived as their daughter until 1913. Up until 1928 or ‘29, Fritz Held operated the ranch personally with hired help or thru tenants, living there or in Rapid City. In 1927, or thereabouts, he became ill and spent a few months at the Chamberlain sanitarium taking medical treatments. Shortly after his return to the ranch he displayed evidences of mental disorder, evincing a marked antipathy for Isaac Morris, one of the defendants, who was at the time employed on the ranch and a frequent visitor at the home in town. Whether Fritz Held’s animosity toward Isaac was prompted by the mental derangement which resulted in his being later committed to the State Insane Asylum, or whether it had some basis in fact, is not established, but that it existed is certain. He told a neighbor, Walter Taylor, that Isaac was interfering in his family affairs and Taylor, who is decidedly a man of parts and possessed of unusually acute perceptions and good sense, advised Mrs. Held to get rid of Isaac, which however, she declined to do. This incident is mentioned not as a finding that at this early date, Isaac was in fact guilty of any interference with Fritz Held’s family affairs, but only as it seems to mark the first advent of this defendant into the immediate affairs of Joanna Held.

In 1929, Fritz Held was adjudged insane and committed to the Asylum where he shortly died. Prior to this, in 1927, he had conveyed all his real estate and personal property to his wife, Joanna, and in 1929 after her husband had been sent to Yankton, Mrs. Held leased the ranch to either the defendant, Fred, or to Fred and Isaac, depending on the form of Exhibit ‘1’ (the lease) at the time of its signature by Mrs. Held. Further attention to this instrument will be given later in this opinion.

Under this lease (Exhibit ‘1’), the defendants, Fred and Isaac Morris and Fred’s wife, Pearl Roberts Morris, occupied and operated the ranch until the death of Joanna Held in 1941. ...

During all the period of their occupancy of this ranch, the relations existing between the Morris family and Mrs. Held were extremely cordial and friendly with marked attention and apparent devotion to Mrs. Held and her interests on the part of the Morrises. They visited her two or three times a week and brought her provisions from the ranch. Much of the time Isaac lived with her at her home in town, mowing the lawn, shingling the house, cooking meals and occasionally driving her about in his automobile. He was unmarried and apparently without other occupation than what work he did at irregular times on the ranch. That his attentions were welcome and highly appreciated by his Aunt, Mrs. Held, seems clearly evident from complimentary remarks about him made by her to her friends; and his brother Fred was likewise in high favor, eclipsed in the aunt’s regard, only by Ike. ...

The Morris family, both before and after her death, had access to grantor’s safety deposit box as well as to letters and papers, which were kept in a bookcase in her house.

While there is much testimony as to how Mrs. Held desired to dispose of her property at her death as well as to high esteem in which she held the Morris boys and as to the where Clara Reid stood in her estimation, I deem none of it as of any great importance. There is no testimony which directly explains why she made out these deeds and this bill of sale, or why the bill of sale and the deed to Isaac Morris are dated October 29th, 1935, while the two deeds to Fred bear date of March 22nd, 1938. There is no expert testimony as to either the typing or the handwriting on these instruments or on Exhibit ‘1’, but it does appear evident to me that the signature ‘Joanna Held’ appearing on Exhibit ‘2’, the bill of sale, is not the signature of Mrs. Held, but is a tracing of a pencilled signature with the pencil marks erased. Made as it was on the same date as Exhibit ‘3’, which was prepared by and acknowledged before C. E. Feigel as a notary, the ink is different, or if the same, is fresher than in the signature on the latter and I consider it a forgery.

These I consider to be the principal events and the more important facts necessary to a clear comprehension of the relationship of the parties to this suit as it existed in the fall of 1939, when Pearl Morris says these deeds and the bill of sale were delivered to her by Joanna Held.

Her testimony, if true, establishes a legally sufficient manual delivery by Mrs. Held of these conveyances, and her testimony as to what transpired between her and the grantor is not controverted or denied from the lips of any witness. No one else was present but Joanna Held and Pearl Roberts Morris, and Joanna Held’s lips are sealed in death.

She says that Joanna Held at her home in Rapid City handed her a sealed envelope (Exhibit ‘F’) on which appeared in Mrs. Held’s handwriting, the words ‘To Fred and Isaac Morris’ and told her what was contained therein anal for her to deliver it to the ‘boys’, but for them not to record the deeds until after her death. At the same time she also handed her another envelope containing Exhibits ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, telling her in detail their history and stating that she might need them some day. These exhibits were respectively (1) a scrap of paper signed by...