Hart v. Meredith

• Decision Date: 13 November 1901
• Citation: 65 S.W. 507
• Parties: HART et al. v. MEREDITH.<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

65 S.W. 507

HART et al. v. MEREDITH.¹

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas.

November 13, 1901.

Appeal from district court, Bexar county; S. J. Brooks, Judge.

Action by Kittie C. Meredith against Major Hart and others. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendants appeal. Modified.

J. A. Buckler and Jas. Raley, for appellants. Ball & Fuller, for appellee.

FLY, J.

Appellee instituted this suit in Kerr county to try title to certain land situated therein, and by agreement the venue was changed to Bexar county, where a trial by jury resulted in a verdict and judgment for appellee. The evidence showed that J. C. Meredith, the father of appellee, desiring to trade certain property in San Antonio, belonging to him, for the land in controversy, conveyed the San Antonio property to his mother, Mary K. Meredith, in trust to be traded for the Kerr county property. The trade was made, the deed for the Kerr county property being taken in the name of Kittie C. Meredith by direction of J. C. Meredith. The property in San Antonio which was traded for the land in Kerr county was not the property of Mrs. Mary K. Meredith. Appellants claim the land through an execution sale issued out of the district court of Bexar county by virtue of a judgment in favor of Major Hart and against Mary K. Meredith for $1,728.

The first assignment of error complains of the refusal of the court to instruct the jury that the deed from J. C. Meredith to his mother, Mary K. Meredith, made her the owner of the property for a valuable consideration; and that, if she was insolvent when S. W. Smith, the owner of the Kerr county property, conveyed it to Kittie C. Meredith, and unable to pay her debts, the jury should find for appellants. In the deed made by J. C. Meredith to his mother it was recited that certain land in Runnells county, which it seems was traded for the San Antonio property, was the property of Mary K. Meredith, and that the grantor made the deed to his mother to reimburse her for the Runnells county property. Evidence was introduced, which satisfactorily, it seems, explained to the jury why J. C. Meredith had made the deed in question, and showed that, in spite of the recitations in the deed, the property belonged to J. C. Meredith. Bills of exception were taken to the admission of such testimony, and it is contended that the recitations in the deed are conclusive against appellee, and a verdict should have been instructed as indicated in the special charge above referred to. As contended by appellants, recitals in deeds bind parties and their privies, on the ground that they are estopped by such recitations in the course of the transaction in which the deed is given, but it is well settled that such recitations do not constitute an estoppel as to a stranger to the instrument, nor in suits not founded on the instrument containing the recital. Such estoppel will not even arise in other and collateral controversies arising between the parties to the deed. Williams v. Chandler, 25 Tex. 4. The above rule is founded on the principle that no estoppel can arise unless there be a direct and apparent connection between the wrong and the injury inflicted. Appellants were not parties to the deed given by J. C. Meredith to Mary K. Meredith, and the debt for which he sued Mrs. Meredith was not made on the strength of it, and their actions in connection with Mrs. Meredith could not have been influenced by it in any manner. If the property really belonged to J. C. Meredith, how could the position of appellants have been made worse by a deed in trust to Mrs. Meredith? If the deed was not intended to devest J. C. Meredith of the right he had to the land, it is apparent that it was still his property, and that prior creditors of Mrs. Meredith could not have been injured by the conveyance to her, no matter what the recitals may have been in the deed. This proposition would seem to be axiomatic. McCoy v. Pease (Tex. Civ. App.) 42 S. W. 659. Appellants, realizing that only parties and their privies are bound by and can take advantage of the recitals in a deed, claim to be privies under the parties to the deed, because they levied on the land and sold it as the property of Mrs. Meredith. Clearly, this did not make them privies under the law. In the case of Sunderlin v. Struthers, 47 Pa. 411, the purchaser at an execution sale relied on the recital in a mortgage given by the execution debtor as an estoppel in his favor, but the court said that it was "an unprecedented extension of the doctrine of equitable estoppel to hold that a man is bound to the world to make good what he has said to any one, if others choose to rely upon it. If every man may be held liable, not only to parties and privies to his deed, but to all mankind, to make good every introductory recital which the deed contains, it behooves him to avoid recitals, and be...