Hooks v. Bridgewater

• Decision Date: 13 April 1921
• Docket Number: (No. 2699.)
• Citation: 229 S.W. 1114
• Parties: HOOKS et al. v. BRIDGEWATER.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

229 S.W. 1114

HOOKS et al. v. BRIDGEWATER.

(No. 2699.)

Supreme Court of Texas.

April 13, 1921.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals of First Supreme Judicial District.

Suit by Bob Bridgewater against H. A. Hooks, as administrator of the estate of John W. Davis, deceased, and others, to enforce a verbal agreement whereby defendant's intestate was to devise his property to plaintiff. A judgment for defendants was reversed by the Court of Civil Appeals and judgment rendered for plaintiff (159 S. W. 1004), and defendants bring error. Judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals reversed, and judgment of the district court affirmed.

Smith, Crawford & Mead, of Beaumont, Singleton & Noll, of Kountze, and Leon Sonfield, of Beaumont, for plaintiffs in error.

James A. Harrison, W. D. Gordon, and Ralph Durham, all of Beaumont, for defendant in error.

PHILLIPS, C. J.

The plaintiff, Bob Bridgewater, brought the suit against the administrator of the estate of John W. Davis, deceased, and the heirs at law of Davis, to recover Davis' estate. The suit was in fact one to enforce a verbal agreement claimed to have been entered into by the plaintiff's father—at that time his only surviving parent, when the plaintiff was a child of nine years of age—and Davis, whereby the father contracted to surrender plaintiff's custody and control to Davis, and Davis—a single man who never married—agreed upon that consideration to rear the plaintiff, giving him the care and rights of a son, make him his heir and leave to him at his death all of his property.

The trial court found that the evidence established the making of the parol agreement; that Davis took charge of the plaintiff under the agreement when he was thus a child, and plaintiff's father never thereafter exercised any control over him; that the plaintiff lived with Davis thereafter, giving him the affection and obedience of a son, and performing chores and services around his home as needed, for which he received no wages or money consideration. Davis failed to bequeath any of his property to plaintiff, dying intestate, leaving an estate of both real and personal property. Before his death he had not placed the plaintiff in possession of any of it.

Judgment for the defendants was rendered in the trial court. On the appeal, this was reversed by the honorable Court of Civil Appeals for the First District and judgment rendered for the plaintiff.

As it affected the land belonging to Davis, the contract was plainly condemned by the statute of frauds. It was merely a parol agreement whereby in consideration of the father's surrender of the custody of the plaintiff and the latter's living with Davis as a son, Davis' lands owned at his death should become the plaintiff's property. It was in effect but a parol sale of Davis' lands to be performed by him in the future, and has no higher dignity than such a sale. The question presented by this feature of the case is whether the performance of the contract by the plaintiff relieves it from the operation of the statute of frauds, or, as more accurately stated, renders the contract enforcible in equity notwithstanding the statute.

The Court of Civil Appeals has held that it does, despite the fact that there was never any possession of the lands by the plaintiff in Davis' lifetime.

To sustain this holding, there must be created by judicial authority another exception to the operation of the statute of frauds, one unsanctioned by any previous decision of this court, and of larger consequence than any heretofore recognized by it. This is evident. For if it be the law that a contract of this kind may, under the circumstances here present, be enforced against a decedent's estate, the entire inheritances of families are, for the benefit of strangers to the blood, put at the mercy of parol evidence.

From an early time it has been the rule of this court, steadily adhered to, that to relieve a parol sale of land from the operation of the statute of frauds, three things were necessary: 1. Payment of the consideration, whether it be in money or services. 2. Possession by the vendee. And 3. The making by the vendee of valuable and permanent improvements upon the land with the consent of the vendor; or, without such improvements, the presence of such facts as would make the transaction a fraud upon the purchaser if it were not enforced. Payment of the consideration, though it be a payment in full, is not sufficient. This has been the law since Garner v. Stubblefield, 5 Tex. 552. Nor is possession of the premises by the vendee. Ann Berta Lodge v. Leverton, 42 Tex. 18. Each of these three elements is indispensable, and they must all exist.

Regardless of the disposition of other courts to engraft other exceptions upon a plain and salutary statute which had its origin in the prolific frauds and perjuries with which parol contracts concerning lands abounded, this court has always refused to further relax the statute. We think the wisdom of its course has been justified.

Equity has no concern in such cases except to prevent the perpetration of a fraud. That is the only ground that can justify its interference. Otherwise, the exercise of its jurisdiction for the practical annullment of the statute would be but bare usurpation. It is not to remedy a possible loss to the purchaser that it may intervene. It is the operation of a plain and valid statute that is to be relieved against. For this reason eminent judges have doubted whether under any circumstances courts of equity had originally the power to enforce such parol agreements in open disregard of the statute, and have questioned the wisdom of departing from its certain rule however plausible the pretext. The statute is valid; it is imperative; it is emphatic. Its simple requirement that contracts for the transfer of lands be in writing, imposes no hardship. The effect of its relaxation in what seemed to the courts hard cases has produced abuses almost as great as would have its rigorous enforcement, in the substitution of a doubtful state of the law for a rule that was plain and certain and easily capable of observance. In a noted early English case the chancellor made the following observation on this trend of judicial decisions:

"The statute was made for the purpose of preventing frauds and perjuries, and nothing can be more manifest to any person who has been in the habit of practicing in the courts of equity than that the relaxation of the statute has been the ground of much perjury and much fraud. If the statute had been rigorously observed, the result would probably have been that few instances of parol agreements would have occurred. Agreements would, from the necessity of the case, have been reduced to writing; whereas it is manifest that the decisions on the subject have opened a new door to fraud, and that under the pretense of part execution, if possession is had in any way whatever, means are frequently found to put a court of equity in such a situation that, without departing from its rule, it feels obliged to break through the statute."

Whatever may be the diversity of views upon the general subject, it is clear that to warrant equity's "breaking through the statute" to enforce such a parol contract, the case must be such that the nonenforcement of the contract—or the enforcement of the statute—would, itself, plainly amount to a fraud. This is the basis, and the only basis, for the jurisdiction which courts of equity have assumed in their creation of exceptions to the statute. When it is considered that the exercise of that jurisdiction results in any case in practically setting the statute aside, certainly there should exist some positive rule which will insure its exercise for only the prevention of an actual fraud as distinguished from a mere wrong, and by which the question of whether a failure to enforce the contract would result in such a fraud may be determined so surely as to leave the statute itself, through the exactness of the exception, with some definiteness of operation. The merit of the rule announced by this court in every decision where it has dealt with the subject is that it does this. By its requirement of payment of the consideration, adverse possession by the purchaser, and his making of valuable and permanent improvements in order for the contract to be exempt from the statute, it insures the application of the exemption only for the avoidance of actual fraud, and secures as it should, the full operation of the statute in all other cases. Its purpose is both to prevent the perpetration of fraud and to safeguard the titles of lands. It is a rule founded in sound reason and common experience, and is fair and just.

There is no fraud in refusing to enforce the contract where only the consideration...