Field v. Middlesex Banking Co.

• Decision Date: 16 May 1899
• Citation: 77 Miss. 180,26 So. 365
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: BATE FIELD v. MIDDLESEX BANKING CO. ET AL

26 So. 365

77 Miss. 180

BATE FIELD v. MIDDLESEX BANKING CO. ET AL

Supreme Court of Mississippi

May 16, 1899

March 1899

FROM the chancery court of Bolivar county, HON. JAMES C LONGSTREET, Chancellor.

Bate Field, the appellant, was the complainant in the court below the Middlesex Banking Co. and others, were defendants there.

The facts upon which the decision of the court is based are sufficiently apparent from the opinion.

Reversed and remanded.

Carroll & McKellar Tim E. Cooper, and John P. Bullington, for appellants.

Unless this complainant contracted away her estate witch the benefit of competent and independent advice, at arms' length, possessed of knowledge of all the material facts within the knowledge of the defendants, she was entitled to a decree vesting her with title in fee to the four plantations, for the Middlesex Banking Company, upon the authorities, must be treated as the substitute for J. H. Field, and as her trustee (Losey v. Stanley, 147 N.Y. 560-579; Kirsch v. Tozier et al., 143 N.Y. 390-397; Rhodes v. Bate, 1 L. R. Cr. App. Cas., 257; Tate v. Williamson, 3 L. R. Ch. App. Cas., 55; Walker v. Lymonds, Swanson's Ch., 72), the fee having vested in her upon the death of her uncle and brother. Gray v. Hudson, 53 Miss. 587.

The complainant's contention is that she is entitled in this forum to a cancellation of the special warranty deed of November, 1896, on the ground that she was without counsel of her own to advise her; that she was profoundly ignorant of all the matters and things connected with the litigation; that she was but a child, with no business experience, having just attained her majority; that all the dealings were had by others, and among those who had those dealings were the defendants, who occupied relations to her which absolutely precluded them, or either of them, from buying the property of her without making to her the fullest disclosure of every material fact which it was necessary for her to know, in order that she might deal with them, or either of them, possessed with the knowledge of every essential and material fact within their knowledge that would put her in possession of the truth of all the transactions had between them, or either of them, and her trustee, or any one acting by the procurement of her trustee, that she might be in a position to intelligently know what her rights were, and thus knowing, to have some conception of the value of her property interests.

All of the material facts were concealed. Not a document produced which discloses or leads to information about a single transaction that affected her property rights, yet the Middlesex Banking Company had aided the trustee in his exchanging of her property for that in which she had no interest, by releasing its mortgages on hers, and in making five mortgages.

Miss Field was entitled to have been advised that claiming under the deed of the 30th of August, under a statute of Mississippi, and the decisions construing that statute, upon the falling in of the estate of the life tenant, she had, with her brother, an estate subject alone to the trusts imposed thereon by a provision in the deed of her uncle, and that upon the falling in of the estate of her brother, without heirs of his body, that she became the owner in fee of the four plantations, and that under the will of her uncle, if the deed of the 30th of August should be declared invalid for any purpose, she was entitled to the entire estate which had been conveyed by that trust deed, and which had been sold under various fraudulent sales, and that notwithstanding such sales, the trusts, whether she claimed under the deed of the 30th of August or in antagonism to that deed and under the will, were impressed upon the lands by reason of the transactions which took place, and which have been developed in evidence by the testimony of witnesses and the documents produced, so as to unmistakably appear in their true colors.

She was entitled to have been told that she could come into a court of equity, and say when all the transactions of which her uncle in his lifetime complained were made, she was an infant of tender years, and she had no personal knowledge of the circumstances of the execution thereof, and while an infant, under the direction and control of the defendants, or some of them, she sued out letters of administration with the will annexed of Eldon C. Field, or, rather, they were procured in her name, and that the suit had been revived in her name as such administratrix; and that having assumed the trusts of that administration, that it was her duty either to proceed in the prosecution of the suit as it had been originally propounded on behalf of her testator, or bring the matter to the attention of the court, to the end that, if necessary to the proper prosecution of the suit, she might be relieved of her office as such administratrix, and another appointed in her place, and restored to her position as the defendant, in order that she might assert and maintain, against adverse parties thereto, the estate vested in her by the deed of the 30th of August.

She was also entitled to have been informed as to each and every of those transactions, the connection of all the parties thereto with each and every one of them, and the exact steps which were taken that brought about the breaches of the trusts of the deed of the 30th of August, 1890. She was also entitled to have been informed that the account between the Middlesex Banking Company and the trustee, under the deed of the 30th of August, was kept in the name of that trustee, and he was dealt with as the principal; that these sales were all brought about, and were not sales in invitum, and who were the efficient and co-operating actors in bringing them about; what steps each took, to the end that she might have that information which the beneficence of the law requires should be furnished and possessed by parties standing in the relation that this complainant did, and dealing with those who not only possessed such knowledge, but occupied a fiduciary relation to her in law, and were the efficient instruments to deprive her of her property. She was entitled to have been informed that she could have stood on that record, and have maintained her rights under and by virtue of the validity of the trust deed of the 30th of August, or she could have stood upon the record and claimed under the will of her uncle, and admitted that the trust deed could be avoided by reason of either circumstances of imposition or of mental incapacity. She was entitled to have been told that until that deed was avoided, it operated to pass the title of E. C. Field to the plantations (Hafler v. Strange, 65 Miss. 323-328), and that he carved out the life estate for himself, and after his death the beneficial estate for herself and her brother, and upon the death of her brother without issue of the body or children, the entire estate vested in herself. Code, § 2436; Gray v. Hudson, supra; Jordan v. Roach, 32 Miss. 481.

When the complainant was informed of the true relation of the defendants to the contracts, the enforcement of which apparently deprived her of all property rights as to each and every of those contracts, child as she was, she would have known "it is nothing more than a sham contract; a thing entered into by one agent to sell with another agent . . . to buy;" that "there really was nothing more in it when it had been adopted than when it was entered into; that it was not a transaction which could, in any sense, bind" her. New Sombrero Co. v. Erlanger, Law Reports, 5 Ch. Div., 113.

The several acts were steps that made fraud possible, and were the acts of the defendants in co-operation to obtain complainant's estate, and all of them were mala fides. McLean v. Letchford, 60 Miss. 183.

Wheeler v. Smith, 9 How. (U.S.), 55, is not in point by reason of the dissimilarity of the facts.

Here we have every element of trust. The truth is suppressed. The complainant, a mere child, is brought to the scene long after proposals for compromise, of which she had no knowledge, had been exchanged between counsel; taken to a room of a hotel and there told that she would lose everything, because a certain deposition which she never saw and has never seen to this day, had disclosed the facts which established that she had no rights to propound. This deposition is not produced for her inspection, or for the inspection of her present counsel. That her title has been validly purchased under those circumstances, upon an agreement of compromise tainted with fraud, is obvious. Such compacts require the fullest good faith; may be vitiated as well by concealment as by positive misstatement. Tate v. Williamson, 2 L. R., Ch. App. Cases, 72; Dorrah v. Hill, 73 Miss. 787-800.

Perkins & Winston, for appellees.

The case at bar is an effort on the part of the appellant to set aside a compromise of a long and hotly contested litigation, after numerous depositions had been taken, made by her with the advice of her mother, her brother, and her counsel in the suit, the complainant being sui juris, there being no relation of trust or confidence between her and the appellees, and the negotiations for which were first set on foot on her behalf and by her attorneys.

Although the complainant, in her sworn bill, has said that on the day she became twenty-one years old, "Without knowledge of her rights and without advice of counsel of her own, she executed the compromise deed, and that she was ignorant when she executed that deed that her uncle had, on August 30 1890, conveyed the land to her father in trust, after the death of her uncle, for the benefit of herself and brother, and although she deposed upon direct examination, "No one ever advised me...