Fowler v. Alabama Iron & Steel Co.

• Decision Date: 13 January 1910
• Citation: 164 Ala. 414,51 So. 393
• Parties: FOWLER v. ALABAMA IRON & STEEL CO.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

51 So. 393

164 Ala. 414

FOWLER v. ALABAMA IRON & STEEL CO.

Supreme Court of Alabama

January 13, 1910

Appeal from Chancery Court, St. Clair County; W. W. Whiteside Chancellor.

Bill by the Alabama Iron & Steel Company against Samuel O. Fowler. A demurrer to the bill was overruled, and defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

Goodhue & Blackwood, for appellant.

Hood &amp Murphree, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

Appellant having in July, 1907, sued appellee in ejectment for the recovery of "the following tract of land, the mineral interest and mining rights in and to" the tract described in the complaint, the appellee filed the bill in this case to enjoin that suit and to have its ownership of the land decreed. The decree of the chancellor overruling a demurrer to the bill is brought here for review.

The facts, some of which are averred in an alternative way, are peculiar, and may be fairly stated, for the purpose of the consideration of the main question raised by this appeal, as follows: In the year 1882 A. J. Crawford, acting through one Beers, employed S. T. Fowler to purchase mineral interests in lands in Etowah and St. Clair counties, furnishing money for that purpose. Fowler was to have the surface of the lands so purchased in part compensation for his services. The land in question, surface and mineral right, was purchased under that agreement and paid for out of Crawford's money. S. T Fowler fraudulently or wrongfully, as the bill states it, procured the vendor to make deed of the entire fee to his son, S. O. Fowler, then an infant of three or four years. Within a few weeks thereafter he made a conveyance of the mineral interest to Beers, and Beers in turn conveyed the like interest to Crawford. In the year 1900 the mineral interest in question passed by conveyance through one Elliott to the appellee, complainant in the court below. On the day Elliott purchased from Crawford, the deed to S. O. Fowler was filed for record. At that time Crawford, Beers, and the original vendor were all dead. The bill is silent as to whether the complainant, or any of its predecessors in interest, had knowledge or notice of the conveyance to S. O. Fowler prior to its filing for record, and this omission to speak is made the basis for appellant's main insistence, which is that the complainant fails to discharge by appropriate averment the onus of rebutting the inference of laches, which must be drawn from the lapse of time since the breach of trust.

A further averment of the bill is that complainant was in possession of the mineral strata at the time of the bill filed. The bringing of the action at law was an assertion by the plaintiff there, defendant here, that complainant in this cause was then in possession. The bill fails to disclose anything in respect to the possession of either surface or the underlying mineral strata prior to that time. Since the time when complainant--or its predecessors in interest, if that was the case--came into possession and had been so asserting its equitable title, it has not needed to invoke the affirmative relief of equity, except in response to the action at law now pending. During such time the doctrine of laches had no application to its situation; and doubtless for this purpose, if there were no actual possession, general acts of ownership would be sufficient. Ruckman v. Corey, 129 U.S. 387, 9 S.Ct. 316, 3 L.Ed. 728; Hayes v. Carroll, 74 Minn. 134, 76 N.W. 1017; Hall v. Peoria, etc., Ry. Co., 143 Ill. 163, 32 N.E. 598; Harold v. Weaver, 72 Ala. 373; 5 Pom. Eq. Jur. § 33. But the complainant can have no advantage from its omission to state the fact in reference to the possession of the premises--by which we mean the underlying mineral strata--prior to the bringing of defendant's action to recover possession. The presumption that defendant had possession is not inconsistent with any fact alleged in the bill. It must be presumed that complainant has stated its case as strongly as the facts would justify; and for this reason, or because possession is to be referred to the legal title, or for both reasons, the possession of the mineral strata must be treated as having been with the defendant; and the question of laches must be considered on the hypothesis that complainant was out of possession prior to the bringing of the suit in ejectment.

Although infants are not generally bound by estoppels, courts of equity hold to their power of dealing with every form of fraud by going at once to the essential merit and morality of transactions; and, so dealing, they will not allow an infant to take advantage of his incapacity, whether natural or imposed by law for his protection, by claiming the fruits of a fraud. Perry on Trusts, § 170; Goodman v. Winter, 64 Ala. 410, 38 Am. Rep. 13. So far, then, as the rights of Crawford and his successors in interest are concerned, the deed procured by Fowler to his son, the defendant, though the latter was incapable of any intent whatever, will be considered as their confederated breaking up and repudiation of the trust reposed in the former, with the result that the son became by construction of law a trustee for the complainant--a trustee ex maleficio. Robinson v. Pierce, 118 Ala. 273-301, 24 So. 984, 45 L. R. A. 66, 72 Am. St. Rep. 160. Immediately thereafter complainant's first predecessor in interest might have filed his bill, and the statutory limitation began to run, unless the wrong was fraudulently concealed. Tarleton v. Goldthwaite, 23 Ala. 346, 58 Am. Dec. 296. From that time, also, the peculiar equitable principle of laches began to gather strength to the detriment of the equitable title here asserted by complainant, unless, without culpable negligence on the part of those under whom it claims, they remained in ignorance of the invasion of their rights, or some other sufficient excuse for delay be shown.

It is the settled rule of practice in this state that a demurrer will lie for laches, as well as for statutory limitation appearing on the face of the bill. Greenlees v Greenlees, 62 Ala. 330; Scruggs v. Decatur Mineral Co., 86 Ala. 173, 5 So. 440. It is familiar learning that in the application of the doctrine of laches courts of equity act in accordance with the analogy...