Haseltine v. Smith
| Citation | 55 S.W. 633,154 Mo. 404 |
| Parties | HASELTINE, Trustee, and AETNA LOAN COMPANY v. SMITH et al., Appellants |
| Decision Date | 20 February 1900 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Missouri |
Appeal from Greene Circuit Court. -- Hon. James T. Neville, Judge.
Reversed and remanded (with directions).
A. F Butts for appellants.
Sam H West and Massey & Tatlow for respondents.
The real plaintiff in interest is the corporation, the Aetna Loan Company, who sues as assignee of a $ 16,000 note secured by a deed of trust, in which its co-plaintiff Haseltine is the trustee. The object of the suit as indicated in the original petition was to clear up the title by cancelling certain deeds held by the defendants Smith and Butts, to obtain a personal judgment for the amount of the mortgage note against defendant Rooker, and to foreclose the mortgage. Upon the trial of the case it developed that the mortgage note was not due, and therefore an amended petition was filed seeking a cancellation of defendant's deeds and a decree that the property be vested in defendant Butts subject to plaintiff's mortgage debt. Both the original and amended petition are lacking in perspicuity. It would seem that the plaintiff corporation has interests in the subject derived from two sources but whilst those interests are somewhat confounded in the petitions, yet the right upon which the plaintiff has chosen to found its suit is that of assignee of the $ 16,000 mortgage note, and the only relief sought is in reference to that right. In the original petition it does not appear whether the plaintiff acquired the note sued on before or after the executing and recording of the deeds sought to be canceled, but in the amended petition, it is shown that the plaintiff's title was acquired after those deeds were recorded.
The substance of the amended petition is that in January, 1895 one Rooker bought of L. A. Haseltine certain real estate in the city of Springfield, a part of which was the lot in question, lot 28 Crescent addition, and gave his note for the purchase money thereof, $ 16,000, and a deed of trust back on the property to secure it; that in April, 1895, $ 11,000, and March 12, 1896, $ 129, were paid on the note, and on March 14, 1896, L. A. Haseltine assigned it to plaintiff corporation; that on September 11, 1895, Rooker and wife conveyed the land to defendant Smith, subject to the above named deed of trust, whereupon Smith went into possession and still holds; that on December 26, 1895, there was filed for record in the recorder's office of Greene county, a paper purporting to be a quit-claim deed of this lot 28 from L. A. Haseltine to defendant Smith, which was duly recorded, but that it was not in fact the deed of L. A. Haseltine, and that it was not ever delivered in contemplation of law, the facts relating thereto being, as the petition says, as follows: At a date prior to that of the $ 16,000 deed of trust, all the land embraced in it was owned by S. A. and S. C. Haseltine, brothers of L. A. Haseltine; they conveyed it to one Hall by deed of general warranty, and Hall executed two deeds of trust conveying this lot 28 to secure indebtedness of his, aggregating about $ 2,300, to the plaintiff loan company; but it turned out that at the time S. A. and S. C. Haseltine (whom we will hereafter call the Haseltines as distinguished from L. A. Haseltine) sold to Hall, there was a small judgment of the Greene County Circuit Court standing against them, which was a lien on the land, and after the plaintiff loan company had taken these two deeds of trust from Hall all the land above mentioned that had belonged to the Haseltines was sold under execution emanating from that judgment, and was bought by L. A. Haseltine, who received the sheriff's deed accordingly; then the Haseltines desiring to make good their warranty, arranged with their brother L. A. Haseltine, for a valuable consideration, which they paid him, to convey the land, then worth in the aggregate about $ 15,000, in various parcels to persons who had respectively become purchasers thereof under Hall, and in this arrangement was included a conveyance to be made to the plaintiff corporation of lot 28. In the temporary absence of the Haseltines from the city the carrying out of the arrangement was left with Mr. White, their attorney, and L. A. Haseltine was to quit-claim when and to whomsoever Mr. White requested. The petition then goes on to state that during the absence of the Haseltines defendant Smith falsely represented to Mr. White that the Haseltines had told him they were willing to have the quit-claim made to him, Smith, for the sum of $ 60, and accordingly Mr. White, being thus mislead caused the quit-claim deed complained of to be executed and delivered to defendant Smith, who afterwards executed a deed of trust to secure a $ 500 note to defendant Butts, who was the attorney for Smith in the scheme and knew all about it, and that since the bringing of this suit Smith and wife had conveyed the lot by quitclaim to Butts. The prayer of the amended petition is in effect that the quit-claim deed to Smith and his deed of trust to Butts be canceled and that Butts be decreed to hold the title subject to the balance due on the plaintiff's $ 16,000 mortgage note, which is stated to be $ 4,871. The answer was a general denial.
It will be observed that the plaintiffs in this amended petition make mention of the loan company's title under Hall only incidentally, as a fact in the history of the quit-claim deed from L. A. Haseltine to Smith. They make no complaint of injury to that title, and seek no vindication of it, in fact we do not know from the petition what the condition of that interest was at the date of filing this suit. Whether or not the debt was paid or satisfactorily secured otherwise, or even that it was still held by the loan company, is not shown, but the sole purpose of the plaintiffs as therein indicated was to vindicate the rights of the loan company under the title derived through L. A. Haseltine, who purchased at the sheriff's sale.
At the beginning of the trial defendants objected to any evidence on the part of the plaintiff on the ground that the petition did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action which objection was overruled, and exception duly preserved. The evidence showed that in the beginning the Haseltines owned all the land, which is a large quantity, embraced in the $ 16,000 deed of trust, and they sold it by warranty deed to Hall, who borrowed money from and had other transactions with the plaintiff loan company, by which he became indebted to it in about $ 2,400, to secure which he executed the two deeds of trust as stated in the petition; that subsequent to the two deeds of trust to the loan company Hall executed a deed of trust in favor of the Haseltines to secure them on a note for $ 1,900, which was afterwards foreclosed and the title from that sale passed by mesne conveyances to the loan company, which held it at the time the transactions out of which this suit arose began; that in the negotiations whereby Hall borrowed the money and became otherwise indebted to the loan company for which he executed the two deeds of trust to it, the Haseltines had acted as the agents of the loan company and had furnished it an abstract showing the title clear in Hall, although at the time there was the small judgment above mentioned standing against them, which was a lien on the land, and under which the land was afterwards sold; that the land sold at that sheriff's sale was worth about $ 15,000, yet it was struck off to L. A. Haseltine for less than $...
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