Duncan v. Williams

• Decision Date: 09 April 1890
• Parties: DUNCAN ET AL. v. WILLIAMS ET AL.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

7 So. 416

89 Ala. 341

DUNCAN ET AL. v. WILLIAMS ET AL.

Supreme Court of Alabama

April 9, 1890

Appeal from chancery court, Mobile county; THOMAS W. COLEMAN, Judge.

The bill in this case was filed by the appellants against the appellees, and sought to set aside, and have declared void several conveyances of land. The facts are set forth at length in the opinion. The bill was demurred to, and respondents moved to dismiss it for want of equity. On submission to the chancellor, he sustained the demurrers, and made a decree dismissing the bill. This decree is appealed from, and assigned as error.

Overall & Bestor, for appellants.

Fielding Vaughan and Pillans, Torrey &amp Hanaw, for appellees.

McCLELLAN J.

There are, apparently, two decrees of the chancery court which stand in the way of the relief sought by the present bill. Each of these decrees was rendered in the year 1841. Each of them purported to foreclose a mortgage on the lands in controversy. Each ordered a sale. Under each a sale was had and confirmed, and a deed executed; and whatever title passed under either of them is now held by the defendants below appellees here. The bill in this case, which was filed July 6, 1888, more than 46 years after the enrollment of said decrees and the sales under them, can, of course, be maintained at this late day only upon the grounds of fraud in the procurement and rendition of the decrees, and that the facts constituting the fraud have been discovered within one year next before the institution of the suit. Code, § 2630. It may be admitted, for all the purposes of this appeal, that the bill sufficiently charges fraud, and knowledge of it, on the part of the respondents, to have entitled the complainant to the relief prayed, had the cause of action not passed under the ban of the statute of limitations; and, proceeding upon the case presented with that concession, the pivotal inquiry is whether the cause of action is brought, by appropriate allegation, within the exception to the statute above referred to, which, notwithstanding the bar has been perfected, considered apart from the concealment of fraud, allows one year after the discovery of the fraud in which suit may be brought. Does the bill charge, with the precision and directness which the law requires, that the facts relied on as constituting the fraud were discovered only within one year prior to July 6, 1888. The bill is a very voluminous paper. It alleges transactions which are spread out over nearly a half century. It charges the connection with these transactions, at various points along the line of their development, of a great number of people, many of whom are long since dead. It involves all of these people in the fraudulent purposes and practices, the first tangible result of which was the rendition of the decrees in question, in 1841, and the last development of which was the effort, in 1887, to continue the concealment of the fraud from the complainant. All along throughout these years, covinous intent, resulting in fraudulent acts, is laid against complainant's mother, her step-father, her half-brother and sister, disconnected third persons, with apparently no interests to subserve in defrauding complainant, and against the persons who now claim the property. Yet when the effort is made by the pleader to bring her case within the saving exception to the statute, when it was upon her to aver with precision that the facts constituting the fraud had been discovered within the year, the requirement is attempted to be met by the averment that one single fact, and this a fact which, at most, only tended to show fraud, from among the manifold substantive charges made by the bill. To state the case more concretely, the bill alleges that John J. Springsteel, the father of the complainant, owned the land in controversy as far back as 1838 or 1839, and up to his death, which occurred in February, 1840; that at the time of his death one Earle held a mortgage on the land to secure the payment of $1,000; that on April 25, 1840, complainant's mother, the widow of Springsteel, paid off this mortgage with money belonging to the estate, and took a paper from Earle evidencing the fact of payment and satisfaction; that, soon after Springsteel's death, one Mudge and Mrs. Springsteel agreed to intermarry, and thereupon they entered into a conspiracy to defraud the complainant, then an infant of tender years, of her patrimony, and, in execution of their fraudulent design, said Mudge, with knowledge of the fact that the Earle mortgage had been satisfied, procured from Earle, who was a brother of Mrs. Springsteel, a power of attorney to prosecute a bill to foreclose the satisfied mortgage; that this bill was filed in October, 1840, and prosecuted to decree against Mrs. Springsteel and complainant and her brother; that Mudge, while acting for Earle under the power of attorney in prosecuting the suit, was appointed by the court and acted as guardian ad litem for the infant defendants; that at the foreclosure sale Mudge became the purchaser, and soon after married Mrs. Springsteel, and lived with her on the land up to his death, which occurred five or six years afterwards; that said foreclosure suit proceeded "almost side by side with another bill, filed by the Planters' & Merchants' Bank and Hunt," to foreclose a mortgage on the land executed in 1835; that said Mudge had arranged with complainants in this latter suit to acquire any title they should get out of that proceeding; that a decree of foreclosure passed in that case, the land was sold under said decree, and bought by Hunt, who subsequently conveyed by quitclaim to Mudge; that Mudge paid nothing, or a nominal sum, for this conveyance, and that whatever he did pay was...