George H. Adams v. Andrew D. Ladeau
| Decision Date | 26 May 1911 |
| Citation | 79 A. 996,84 Vt. 460 |
| Parties | GEORGE H. ADAMS v. ANDREW D. LADEAU |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
October Term, 1910.
CASE for deceit in the sale of a farm. Plea, the general issue. Trial by court at the June Term, 1909, Orange County, Taylor J., presiding. Judgment for the defendant to recover his costs. The plaintiff excepted. The opinion states the case.
Judgment affirmed.
Wallace Batchelder and R. M. Harvey for the plaintiff.
Present ROWELL, C. J., MUNSON, WATSON, HASELTON, AND POWERS, JJ.
This is an action on the case for deceit in the sale by the defendant to the plaintiff of a certain farm in Braintree known as the Elhanan Fitts farm. The cause was tried by the court; a finding of facts was made and reduced to writing; and on the facts found judgment was rendered for the defendant to recover his costs. The case comes here on an exception to such judgment.
The farm in question was worth thirteen hundred and twenty-five dollars and was sold by the defendant to the plaintiff for that sum, the plaintiff paying one hundred and twenty-five dollars in cash and assuming a mortgage of twelve hundred dollars which rested on the farm. During the negotiations for the sale, negotiations which were had shortly before the execution and delivery of a deed, the plaintiff asked the defendant how many acres the farm contained and the defendant replied: "One hundred." Nothing further is found as to the circumstances under which this statement was made. This statement is all that was said by the defendant about the acreage of the farm. The defendant had purchased the farm about a year before the time in question, and at the time of his purchase it was represented to him that the farm contained about a hundred acres, and he supposed, but did not know, that it did. During the negotiations the defendant offered to show the boundaries to the plaintiff but the plaintiff said it was unnecessary for the defendant to do that. The plaintiff had for several years lived in the vicinity of the farm, had been past the place frequently, was quite familiar with it, and made no claim that he did not know the boundaries and the extent of it. The farm, in fact, contained only sixty-four acres, as the plaintiff discovered sometime after the sale; but, as has been said, at the time of the sale it was actually worth the purchase price, and it would have been worth three hundred dollars more than that if it had contained a hundred acres divided into tillage land, pasture and woodland, bearing to each other the same proportion as the tillage land, pasture and woodland of its actual acreage bore to each other. The court found that in purchasing the farm the plaintiff relied on the defendant's statement as to acreage.
The plaintiff claims that the judgment for the defendant should be reversed and that judgment should be rendered for the plaintiff to recover the sum of three hundred dollars and his costs.
We treat the finding of the court that the plaintiff in the purchase of the land relied on what the defendant had said about acreage in the previous negotiations as equivalent to a finding that what the defendant had said operated as an inducement to the sale; but there is no finding that the statement was made with an assertion of knowledge or under such circumstances that the plaintiff had a right to rely upon them unless the bare recital of what the defendant said amounts to such finding.
The principle that one may be guilty of fraud in putting off mere belief or opinion as matter of knowledge is well settled. Twitchell v. Bridge, 42 Vt. 68, was a petition in chancery for the foreclosure of a mortgage securing a note given by the defendant to the orator for a part of the purchase price of a certain farm. The main question was whether the defendant was entitled to a deduction from the amount of the note on account of false representations, at the time of the sale and purchase, as to the quantity of acres in the farm. A meadow which constituted the principal part of the farm consisted of but sixty acres and the orator in making the sale had represented it as containing eighty acres. In considering the case which was heard in this Court in 1869, at the...
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