Goodloe v. Goodloe

• Decision Date: 31 March 1906
• Parties: GOODLOE v. GOODLOE et al.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

92 S.W. 767

GOODLOE v. GOODLOE et al.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

March 31, 1906.

Appeal from Chancery Court, Maury County; Walter S. Bearden, Chancellor.

Action by J. M. Goodloe against J. P. Goodloe and others. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendants appeal. Affirmed.

G. T. Hughes and P. S. Chandler, for appellants. E. H. Hatcher and C. P. Hatcher, for appellee.

BEARD, C. J.

The facts in this cause, as found by the Court of Chancery Appeals, are that the complainant, at the solicitation of his aunt, Miss Cornelia Goodloe, abandoned lucrative employment and entered into her service upon an agreement that she would leave a will giving to him a farm in Maury county, Tenn., and the personal property thereon. The service thus undertaken was faithfully and to the satisfaction of his employer rendered by the complainant until the date of her death, on the 9th of November, 1893. Having failed to discharge her obligation, either by will or otherwise, and her administrator and heirs declining to recognize it, this bill was filed to enforce specific performance of the contract, or, in the alternative, praying a decree fixing the value of complainant's services.

To so much of the bill as sought specific enforcement of the contract, the defendants replied the statute of frauds, and to the prayer for alternative relief, they interposed the statute of limitations of six years to that part of complainant's claim which extended beyond that period.

The contract relied upon was one resting in parol, and was therefore unenforceable. It is true, as insisted by complainant's counsel, that the weight of authority, English and American, is that part performance of a contract under the conditions disclosed in this record, will take the contract out of the operation of the statute of frauds; but as early as Patton v. McClure, Mart. & Y., 333, it was held that partial performance of a parol contract for the sale and conveyance of land would not relieve from the application of the statute. This rule then established has since been applied in a great number of cases, so that it may now be regarded as a rule of property in this state.

The alternative contention of complainant is that upon a quantum meruit, not being able to avail himself of specific performance, he should be permitted to recover compensation for the full term of his service, although that term extended beyond the period of six years prior to the filing of his bill in this cause. In other words, the insistence is that the contract to devise this land as compensation to him was an open one, not void by reason of it resting in parol, but simply voidable, capable of being executed by Miss Goodloe at any time up to the day of her death, and was only breached when she died without having made such a devise; and, this being so, the statute of limitations should begin to run from that time.

Mr. Wood in the first volume of his work on Limitations (section 144), says: "Upon contracts all classes, whether written or verbal, the statute begins to run from the time when a right of action accrues." And we may add that a right of action upon a contract ordinarily accrues only at the time of the breach. Illustrating this principle, that author says, in section 160: "Where money has been paid under a contract that is void under the statute of frauds, because not in...