Demourelle v. Piazza

• Decision Date: 26 February 1900
• Citation: 27 So. 623,77 Miss. 433
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: JOSEPHINE M. A. DEMOURELLE v. VINCENT PIAZZA

27 So. 623

77 Miss. 433

JOSEPHINE M. A. DEMOURELLE v. VINCENT PIAZZA

Supreme Court of Mississippi

February 26, 1900

December 1899

FROM the chancery court of Warren county, HON. WILLIAM C. MARTIN Chancellor.

Piazza the appellee, was the complainant in the court below Demourelle, appellant, was defendant there. The purpose of the suit was to enjoin the prosecution of an action of ejectment.

The ancestor of appellant in 1873 executed a deed of trust on the land in controversy to secure a debt, and shortly thereafter died intestate, leaving a widow and four infant children John, Patrick, and Richard Coffin, and the appellant, Josephine, now Mrs. Demourelle.

The party for whose security the deed of trust was executed, the trustee having died, instituted, in 1875, a suit in chancery against the widow and children of the grantor, seeking to have the court appoint a trustee to make sale under the deed, that instrument not providing for a substituted trustee, and a decree was rendered the same year appointing one McManus to make sale under the deed. In 1876 McManus sold the land conveyed by the deed, for a sufficient sum of money to extinguish the debt, and executed to the purchaser, the party to whom the debt was owing, and a complainant in the suit, by virtue of which he was appointed trustee. Thus matters stood until 1885, when a petition for an appeal to the supreme court from the chancery decree was filed in behalf of John, Patrick and Richard, which recited that the widow and the present appellant, Josephine, were dead. The said appeal resulted in the reversal of the decree appointing McManus trustee in the deed of trust on the ground that the record did not show the death of the original trustee. The case thereon is reported, Coffin v. Murphy, 62 Miss. 542. Richard Coffin died intestate just after the reversal and before further proceedings in the cause, leaving his brothers, John and Patrick, as was supposed, his only heirs. On the return of the case to the chancery court, a claim was made therein by John and Patrick Coffin that the lands purchased at McManus' pretended sale had been in the possession of the complainants, and that the rents and profits thereof were sufficient to satisfy the debt secured by the deed of trust. On this contention a decree was rendered, after an accounting, adjudging $ 1, 300 as remaining unpaid upon the debt and ordering the same, with costs, paid by John and Patrick Coffin, in default of which the land conveyed by the deed of trust was condemned to be sold by a commissioner of the court.

Shortly after the rendition of the $ 1, 300 decree the following steps in the way of its execution were taken. The complainants, who had purchased under the pretended sale made by McManus, conveyed the land by quitclaim deed to John and Patrick Coffin, and the latter, for a consideration of $ 1, 500, conveyed a part of said lands, that sued for in the ejectment, to appellee, Piazza, who placed valuable, permanent and not ornamental improvements upon the land. Of this latter sum the $ 1, 300 decree and costs was paid. During all of this time, beginning with the appeal in the original suit, 1885, and up to the institution of the ejectment sought to be enjoined, 1897, the appellant was treated as if she were dead.

It was further shown that the appellant who was born in 1860 had knowledge of the pendency of the first suit while it was in progress, and that she frequently wrote letters to one of her brothers from an orphans' asylum in New Orleans, where she was, and where she remained until her marriage in 1893, asking information about the same; that she was in Vicksburg on a visit, while yet under twenty-one years old, after the reversal by the supreme court, and while the matter of the account touching rents and profits was pending before the master or referee, and was then told by her brothers that a suit was depending about the property, and they promised to advise her of the result. It does not, however, appear that she was advised of the result of the suit until 1897, immediately before she began the ejectment.

A demurrer to the bill was overruled, and the defendant below, appellant, prosecuted an appeal to the supreme court.

The decree is reversed, the demurrer sustained, and the bill dismissed.

Dabney & McCabe, for appellant.

If it be true, as is contended for by the appellee, that the failure to join appellant in the appeal had the effect of leaving the decree appointing McManus trustee in force as against her, and made his deed valid, then the appellee had a complete and adequate remedy at law, and his bill is demurrable for that reason, and ought to be dismissed.

But we insist that, notwithstanding the fact that appellee was not a party to the appeal, still, as the decree was simply a decree substituting a trustee, its reversal by one of the persons against whom it was rendered had the effect to reverse it as to all. It was not such a decree as could be held separable or several in any view of the case. Either McManus' appointment was good as a whole or it was bad as a whole. The court decided that it was bad, and it follows that his appointment, being illegal, his sale by virtue of his appointment as trustee to John and Elizabeth Murphy was invalid. Both went down together.

The bill avers that appellant was not represented before the referee appointed to take and state an account; that she took no part whatever therein, and that in the final decree she was not called upon to pay any part of the amount found due. On the contrary, beginning with the appeal, and in all subsequent proceedings, the appellant was treated as dead. She was not, therefore, represented in all the subsequent proceedings, and the decree of January 16, 1889, was not binding on her.

There is a distinct allegation in the bill that the decree was not formally executed, and the allegation is equally plain that the appellee never purchased under that decree, and did not, and could not, acquire any rights thereunder.

Unless complainant had been a party to the proceeding, and the decree had been rendered against her, and the property had been sold thereunder, she could not be divested of her title.

The fact that the appellee may have paid as much as the property was worth to John and Patrick Coffin does not divest complainant of her title.

Nor is there any evidence afforded by the bill that there was any incumbrance on the property to be paid off. There may have been a judicial ascertainment of an indebtedness, in so far as John and Patrick Coffin were concerned, but there was certainly none in so far as appellant was concerned; the decree pretermitted her.

Appellee has no rights in the premises. He did not purchase the decree, nor did he pay it off. On the contrary, all he did was to buy the property from John and Patrick Coffin, whom he believed to be the owners of it as the only heirs at law of John Coffin, deceased, and paid to them the purchase money therefor. In this matter he was a mere volunteer, and nothing more. He was not a party to the suit, and there was no decree against him in the premises. He had no lien or interest in the property prior to his purchase, and he was not forced, directly or indirectly, to pay off this decree.

Nor did the appellee make any reasonable effort, so far as the record shows, to ascertain the owners of the property when he made the purchase. He might, by the exercise of diligence, have discovered the fact that the appellant was alive.

Nor did he see to it that she got her part of the purchase money. What money was paid was paid to her brothers and appropriated by them, and she has not, , so far as the record shows, ever received one sent, and she should not be enjoined from prosecuting her action of ejectment.

There is nothing in this case to show that the appellant has been guilty of such laches as would debar her from the prosecution of her suit. Before she could be charged with laches at all, it must be shown that she was guilty of such conduct as misled the appellee into the purchase of this property. She must have done something, or failed to do something upon the faith of which he acted.

Shelton & Brunini, for appellee.

There can be no question in this cause...