Ellis v. Deadman's Heirs

• Decision Date: 02 December 1816
• Citation: 7 Ky. 466
• Parties: Ellis v. Deadman's heirs.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

7 Ky. 466

Ellis v. Deadman's heirs.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

December 2, 1816

A receipt for a sum of moneyexpressing that it was the cash part of the purchase of a lot, bought etc., without specifying the terms of the contract, is not such a memorandum as will take the case out of the statute against frauds and perjuries.

OPINION

BOYLE Chief Justice.

THIS was a bill filed for the purpose of obtaining a conveyance of a lot in the town of Versailles, which the complainant alleges he had purchased of the ancestor of the defendants.

The defendants pleaded and relied upon the statute against frauds and perjuries; and on the hearing of the cause the only written evidence of the contract produced by the complainant was a receipt in the following words and figures, viz:

" 4th January, 1808--Received of Jesse Ellis $___, in part pay of a lot he bought of me in the town of Versailles it being the cash part of the purchase of said lot. Nathan Deadman. Test, Will. Atwood, Jr."

The Court below being of opinion that this was not such a memorandum in writing of the contract as was binding under the statute against frauds and perjuries, dismissed the bill and the complainant has appealed to this Court.

We have no hesitation in concurring in opinion with the Court below. If the receipt had specified the terms of the agreement there would have been no doubt of the propriety of decreeing a special execution: for although the receipt was apparently intended only to be evidence of the payment which had been made, yet it would in that case have been in fact such a memorandum of the agreement as would have taken the case out of the provision of the statute. But as the receipt contains no evidence of the terms of the contract, it is obvious that what those terms were can only be ascertained by the introduction of parol testimony--the evils arising from which, in such cases, it was the great object of the statute to prevent.

That a receipt, or other writing not specifying the terms of the agreement, will not take the case out of the statute against frauds and perjuries in England, is well settled by the adjudications of the Courts in that country.-- Sugden, 61-2 and the cases there cited. And as the language of our statute in relation to contracts for the sale of land, is in substance the same as that of the British statute, it is clearly not susceptible of a different construction. It was accordingly...