De Guerin v. Jackson
| Decision Date | 21 April 1932 |
| Docket Number | No. 4162.,4162. |
| Citation | 50 S.W.2d 443 |
| Parties | DE GUERIN et al. v. JACKSON.<SMALL><SUP>*</SUP></SMALL> |
| Court | Texas Court of Appeals |
Appeal from District Court, Smith County; Walter G. Russell, Judge.
Suit by Johnnie Jackson against M. C. De Guerin and others. From judgment for plaintiff, defendants appeal.
Affirmed in part, and reversed and rendered in part.
The suit was instituted by Johnnie Jackson on March 18, 1931, against M. C. De Guerin, J. C. Falvey, J. S. Rushing, and J. B. Blanchard. The action, as respects the defendant M. C. De Guerin, was in the aim and purpose of having a decree of specific performance of a contract of conveyance of 50 ares of land, divesting the apparent legal title out of M. C. De Guerin and vesting it in the plaintiff, claiming that M. C. De Guerin held the title in trust for the plaintiff's benefit. In the alternative, the plaintiff sought to recover of M. C. De Guerin the value of the mineral interests conveyed to the other three defendants mentioned in case the plaintiff was not entitled to recover against such other defendants. As respects the remaining three defendants, the plaintiff sought the cancellation of an oil and gas lease of the land by M. C. De Guerin to the defendants, claiming they purchased with notice of the plaintiff's rights and as casting a cloud upon the plaintiff's title to the land.
The defendant M. C. De Guerin entered a general denial, plea of not guilty, and specially pleaded in substance, that the agreement was unilateral and never accepted, and the proposal of agreements therein was withdrawn before acceptance of the same by Johnnie Jackson; estoppel to enforce the agreement; consent and acquiescence of Johnnie Jackson in the making of the lease in suit by M. C. De Guerin.
The defendants pleaded not guilty and adopted the answer of M. C. De Guerin. The defendants J. C. Falvey and J. S. Rushing further pleaded that they were innocent purchasers for value without notice, having taken the lease relying on the record title with no one in visible actual possession of the premises.
The statement of the evidence more clearly outlines the case and the controversy between the parties:
The 50 acres of land in suit, a part of the Dugald Shaw headright in Smith county, was owned by Jack Cole as community property. At his death he left surviving him his wife, Eliza Cole, and seven children. The wife, Eliza Cole, died in 1928. Johnnie Jackson's mother was a surviving daughter and heir of Jack and Eliza Cole. In December, 1929, all of the heirs of Jack and Eliza Cole duly executed and acknowledged a general warranty deed conveying to M. C. De Guerin the fifty acres of land reciting the consideration to be "Two Hundred and Thirty-five ($235.00) Dollars to us paid by M. C. De Guerin, cash in hand, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged." The deed bears no date, but the dates of each of the several acknowledgments of the different heirs show dates from December 17, 1929, to February 1, 1930. The deed was duly filed for registration in the county clerk's office on February 7, 1930. So far as the deed records show, the title to the land, as evidenced by this deed, reposed in M. C. De Guerin to the date of this suit and the trial of the case. It appears practically without dispute that some six weeks before this deed was made in December, 1929, Johnnie Jackson approached Mr. De Guerin to have him advance the money and pay to each heir the purchase price of and acquire by deed their interest in the land. Mr. De Guerin thereupon paid the heirs the agreed upon purchase price for their respective interests and paid some several years' back taxes due on the land, and notary fees in the execution of the deed to him, all aggregating $609.40. On December 19, 1929, M. C. De Guerin signed and delivered to Johnnie Jackson the written instrument reading:
This instrument was not recorded. The evidence in behalf of Johnnie Jackson is, in effect, that the heirs of his grandmother Cole wanted him for sentimental reasons to acquire the 50 acres and offered to sell it to him; that Mr. De Guerin agreed to advance the purchase price and pay the back taxes and to take the deed in his own name and to give Johnnie Jackson three years within which to pay such consideration for the land and to execute a deed to him as soon as he could make payment of as much as $100 cash of the amount advanced. Johnnie Jackson at the time was residing with his wife and children, and cultivating as a sharecropper, upon a portion of the farm of some 500 acres, known as the Mayfield farm, managed and controlled by Mr. De Guerin, and was being furnished supplies out of the store being operated by Mr. De Guerin. Johnnie Jackson has continued to live and has not removed from the Mayfield farm. The 50-acre tract in suit appears to adjoin the survey in which the Mayfield farm is located, and has no buildings or improvements upon it. Johnnie Jackson and his family, as he says, "lived on the Mayfield tract something like a quarter of a mile from this land" (the 50 acres). A small part of it had been cultivated by some of the Eliza Cole heirs or their tenants prior to the deed to M. C. De Guerin. According to the evidence in behalf of Johnnie Jackson, following the deed to Mr. De Guerin, he cleaned up the hedges and underbrush on about 10 acres of the land, reconstructed a part of the old fence on the west side of the tract that was dilapidated, and put into cultivation about 30 acres in cotton. He raised five and one-half bales of cotton during that year of 1930. No one else but Johnnie Jackson and his family worked on the land or had any part of it in cultivation, and he claimed the land as his own. There is evidence that the people of the neighborhood generally understood that Johnnie Jackson had bought out the interest of the heirs in the land, and that the land belonged to Johnnie Jackson. The evidence shows, as testified by Johnnie Jackson, that "some three sides of that land in controversy was not fenced last year (1930)."
The evidence in behalf of Mr. De Guerin goes to show the absolute and outright purchase of the land by him from the heirs of Eliza Cole, and the execution and delivery of the instrument to convey the land to Johnnie Jackson and that Johnnie Jackson as his tenant used and cultivated some of the land in cotton in 1930, paying as rent one-fourth of the cotton.
In November, 1930, Johnnie Jackson offered to pay to Mr. De Guerin $371, being interest and expenses of the purchase, and asked for a deed, and Mr. De Guerin offered to make the deed, but with reservation to him of the minerals of the land. Johnnie Jackson refused to take the deed to the surface alone of the land and without the mineral rights. Again, in 1931, before this suit was filed, Johnnie Jackson tendered $100 cash payment to Mr. De Guerin and asked for a deed to the land, and Mr. De Guerin offered, and Johnnie Jackson refused to accept, a deed to the surface only of the land with reservation of mineral rights of the land.
On October 4, 1930, M. C. De Guerin executed a lease of the land for a term of ten years to J. C. Falvey and J. S. Rushing for exploration for oil and gas. The defendant Blanchard acquired a fourth of the one-eighth oil royalty through M. C. De Guerin. There is evidence showing that Johnnie Jackson aided Mr. De Guerin in procuring curative deeds from the heirs of Eliza Cole in the purpose to lease the land. There is evidence going to show, and there is affirmative evidence to the contrary, making an issue of fact for the jury, that Johnnie Jackson authorized Mr. De Guerin to lease the premises for oil and gas, and acquiesced in the execution and delivery of the lease by Mr. De Guerin.
The jury made answers to the following issues submitted to them:
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