Hendrickson v. Lyons

• Decision Date: 20 October 1922
• Docket Number: 17120.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Parties: HENDRICKSON et ux. v. LYONS et al.

209 P. 1095

121 Wash. 632

HENDRICKSON et ux. v. LYONS et al.

No. 17120.

Supreme Court of Washington

October 20, 1922

Department 1.

Appeal from Superior Court, Clarke County; Homer Kirby, Judge.

Action by F. D. Hendrickson and wife against Lettie Lyons and others. From a judgment for plaintiffs, defendants appeal. Reversed, with instructions to modify.

F. W. Tempes, of Vancouver, for appellants.

R. C Sugg, of Vancouver, for respondents.

FULLERTON J.

In December, 1909, the respondents, Hendrickson, contracted to sell to one Bessie B. Utter a 20-acre tract of land, situated in Clarke county, saving to themselves the timber standing on the land (except a small described tract), and a right of way over which to remove the timber. After agreeing upon the contract, the parties went to a notary public, stated their agreement to him, and requested him to prepare the necessary legal instruments to carry the agreement into execution. The notary informed them that it would be necessary to execute a written agreement expressing the agreement of sale and a warranty deed to the property from the Hendricksons to Mrs Utter. Instruments were prepared by the notary in accordance with his ideas--the contract being in form an agreement to convey the property with the stated reservations, and the deed an absolute conveyance, without reservations of any kind and without reference to the contract. The deed was properly executed, but Mrs. Utter alone signed the contract.

The respondents shortly thereafter caused the contracts to be recorded. Later on, presumably when the respondent F. D Hendrickson called for the instruments at the auditor's office after they had been recorded, the auditor informed him that the contract had been executed by the wrong party; that he and his wife should have executed it instead of Mrs. Utter. The respondent thereupon took the contract to his home, erased the name of Mrs. Utter, signed it himself, and caused his wife to sign it, and returned it to the auditor to be again recorded.

On October 31, 1913, Mrs. Utter, her husband joining in the conveyance, conveyed the land by warranty deed to the appellant Lettie Lyons. The deed was absolute on its face, containing no reference to the reservation of the timber or the right of way over which to remove it. The respondent, however, was not a purchaser without notice. At the time of the negotiations leading up to the purchase, she was informed that the respondents owned the timber, and the consideration for the purchase was fixed with that understanding.

Some time in 1917, the appellant Lyons made claim to the timber, and in the following January (1918) the respondents began the present action to quiet their title to the timber. Issue was taken on their complaint, and a trial had, which resulted in a decree confirming title in the respondents to the timber on the entire tract.

While a number of assignments of error have been made, they can be reduced to certain principal contentions, and there we will notice in their order.

The first of the contentions is that the facts shown do not justify a reformation of the instruments passing from the respondents to Mrs. Utter on the ground of mistake. It is argued that equity grants relief for mistake of fact, and not mistake of law, and that here there was no mistake of fact decause the parties executed the very form of instrument they intended to execute, and if mistake was made at all it was as to the legal effect of the instruments.

It is undoubtedly a general rule that equity will not grant, relief against mistakes of law, but the rule, like many others, has its exceptions, and we are clear that the case here is within an exception. As was said by the Supreme Court of the United States in Hunt v. Rhodes, 1 Pet. 1, 7 L. Ed. 27:

'When an instrument is drawn and executed, which professes, or is intended, to carry into execution an agreement, whether in writing or by parol, previously entered into; but which, by mistake of the draftsman, either as to fact or law, does not fulfill, or which violates, the manifest intention of the parties to the agreement, equity will correct the mistake, so as to produce a conformity of the instrument to the agreement.'

In Oliver v. Mutual Commercial Marine Ins. Co., 2 Curt. 298, F. Cas. No. 10498, it was said:

'There is a wide distinction between a case where an instrument is, what the parties agreed it should be, but its legal effect is unexpected, and a case where an instrument was designed to carry into effect an existing binding agreement, but by mistake fails to do so. In the former case the party never had a right to anything more than he has got. He may be disappointed in finding that what he has acquired was less valuable than he expected, but he acquired all be bargained for, and there is no ground upon which a court of equity can give him anything more. On the contrary, in the latter case, the party had a complete right, by an existing contract, to something which, by mistake, he has failed to get. And this contract, and the right under it, still subsists, in point of equity; because, though the parties attempted to execute the contract, by mistake they failed to execute it; and therefore a court of equity interposes, and upon the footing of an existing contract, unexecuted, proceeds to put the party in that condition, to which his contract entitles him. And in this class of cases I apprehend it is wholly immaterial, whether the party has failed to obtain that to which he was entitled through a mistake of fact or of law.'

Later cases from the Supreme Court of the United States maintain the same doctrine (see Walden v. Skinner, 101 U.S 577, 25 L.Ed. 963) and our own cases of Dennis v. Northern Pacific R. Co., 20 Wash. 320, 55 P. 210; State...