Ingram Day Lumber Co. v. Robertson

• Decision Date: 05 June 1922
• Docket Number: 22241
• Citation: 129 Miss. 365,92 So. 289
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: INGRAM DAY LUMBER CO. v. ROBERTSON, STATE REVENUE AGENT

92 So. 289

129 Miss. 365

INGRAM DAY LUMBER CO. v. ROBERTSON, STATE REVENUE AGENT

No. 22241

Supreme Court of Mississippi

June 5, 1922

March 1922

1. PUBLIC LANDS. Right of lessee of sixteenth to cut timber is fixed by law.

The right of the lessee of a sixteenth section to cut timber thereon is fixed by law, and can neither be increased nor diminished by a board of supervisors or a court of equity except as may be provided by law.

2. EQUITY. If because of a party's mistake as to an agreement's legal effect it fails to express the contract, equity will relieve.

A simple mistake by a party as to the legal effect of an agreement which he executes, or as to the legal result of an act which he performs, is no ground for equitable relief; but if, after making an agreement, the instrument they execute because of a mistake as to its legal effect, fails to express the contract which the parties actually entered into, equity will interfere with the appropriate relief either by way of defense to its enforcement, or by reformation or cancellation.

3. PUBLIC LANDS. An order extending time to cut and remove timber from school land held to confer no greater right than original lease.

When the lessee of a sixteenth section is without the right to cut timber thereon for commercial purposes, an instrument executed by the president of the board of supervisors pursuant to an order, of the board so to do, extending the time within which the lessee can cut and remove the timber beyond the expiration of the lease, does not confer on the lessee the right to cut and remove the timber where the order under which the instrument was executed expressly provides that it shall confer no greater right to cut and remove the timber than was conferred by the original lease.

4. TROVER AND CONVERSION. Measure of damages value at time of conversion.

The measure of damages for the conversion of property is the value of the property at the time of its conversion with interest thereon to the time of the trial.

ANDERSON and SYKES, JJ., dissenting.

HON. D T. CURRIE, Special Chancellor.

APPEAL from chancery court, Hancock county, HON. D. T. CURRIE, Special Chancellor.

Bill by Stokes V. Robertson, State Revenue Agent, against the Ingram Day Lumber Company. Decree for the plaintiff, and the defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Affirmed.

White & Ford, for appellant.

The facts are that the board of supervisors first caused a fifteen years lease of this land to be sold and it was bought in by G. W. Walker, all parties believing that the purchaser was buying the timber; and the purchaser intending to buy, and the seller intending to sell the timber.

This is disputed by appellee in his brief, but is shown to be true; (A) By the fact that the lease of the land, without the right to cut the timber, was valueless, and it was obvious that any attempt to lease the land without the right to cut the timber would be fruitless, and that such lease would not sell for enough to pay the costs of advertising the sale.

(B) By the fact that immediately after the lease, the purchaser began to cut the choice timber from the land without objection from the board of supervisors, or the township trustees.

(C) By the fact that no other use was ever made or attempted to be made of the leased land.

(D) By the fact that it was understood that a minimum price of two dollars per acre was to be received for this lease based on the value of the timber.

(E) By the fact that the board, in fixing a value of the lease, took into consideration as a basis of valuation, the accessibility of the timber to a sawmill.

(F) By the fact that as soon as the purchaser learned that the lease in its original form did not carry with it the right to cut the timber, they refused to pay the purchase money until formal deeds carrying that right should be executed.

(G) By the fact that the board of supervisors, by resolution spread on its minutes, admitted the mutual mistake and the intention of the parties as contended for by the purchasers, and ordered deeds to be executed conveying the timber.

(H) By the fact that the amount of the bids at the sale, as shown by the testimony of H. S. Weston, one of the bidders, was based on the value of the timber alone.

(I) By the fact that the board of supervisors, the township trustees, and the purchasers at the sale knew that the lease, without the right to cut the timber had no value.

(J) By the testimony of McGehee, president of the board of supervisors, on cross-examination, to the effect that when they sold the lease they were undertaking to sell the right to cut the timber, and that they had verbal instructions in reference thereto from the township trustees.

(K) By the fact that on no other sensible theory can you account for the action of the board of supervisors in first getting the consent of the residents and the inhabitants of the township, then advertising in a newspaper and selling, nor can you on any other sensible theory account for the action of the purchasers in buying at a price at least equal to the value of the timber, a lease which without the right to cut the timber was not worth the paper upon which it was written.

Other evidence of the intention of the parties was offered by appellant, but excluded.

We therefore reiterate the statement made in our original brief that the record in this case shows that the sole purpose of the board of supervisors was to sell the timber and that the procedure had was under the mistaken view that the lease of the land would carry with it the right to cut the timber; that at the sale the vendors intended to sell and believed they were selling and the purchasers intended to buy and believed that they were buying the timber on the land with the lease as a mere incident for the purpose of enabling them to cut it. We further reiterate that the testimony to that effect is undisputed; and we insist that a court of equity would not have been without power to relieve against the obligation for the payment of the large amount of money executed by the purchaser on the one hand, and accepted by the vendor on the other, through mutual mistake as the purchase price for this timber and the purchase price for this timber alone, if appellant had filed a bill to cancel.

The principle involved in the case of Moss Point Lumber Company v. Board of Supervisors is not in any wise involved in the trial of this cause, nor were the principles that are involved in this in any wise involved in the Moss Point Lumber Company case, nor in the case of Bridges and Hill v. Board of Supervisors, cited in counsel's brief.

The effect of the decree in the court below is not only to deny to a court of equity the power to correct a mutual mistake where a board of supervisors is a party, and to right the wrong resulting therefrom, but the court in that decree went further and actively intervened to perpetrate a wrong, or to prevent the righting of a wrong, by invalidating the act of the board of supervisors where that body in the discharge of the duties delegated to it, had in good conscience, righted the wrong resulting from a mutual mistake by effectuating the contract both parties had intended and attempted to make.

Even if this deed was voidable, it was not void, and could not be invalidated without the repayment of the purchase price; and while a court of equity might not in the first instance have reformed the contract and decreed the sale of the timber intended by the parties, we earnestly insist that when the mutual mistake was discovered, and it appeared that the board of supervisors held notes for the purchase money of property which it was authorized to sell, and had intended and attempted to sell, and which the purchaser intended and attempted to buy, but to which through a mutual mistake he got no title, a court of equity was clothed with full authority to relieve the purchaser against the payment of the purchase money of this property he had bought, but did not get; and certainly when the board of supervisors and the grantee of the purchaser themselves consummated the contract which both parties had in mind at the outset by the execution of the deed conveying the title, and the payment of the purchase money the court will not lend its active aid to require appellant to pay the value of this timber to the state after having already paid the purchase money which the complainant still holds.

We submit that so long as courts of equity are guided by the rule of right, they will not lend their aid to such unconscionable wrong as is here attempted, even though the state of Mississippi is to be the beneficiary.

We wish to call the court's attention to the fact that in this case, it will be seen by the record, that in the year 1914, the appellant again bought the timber in consideration of the cancellation of the unexpired lease, and the payment of three hundred and seventy-five dollars, and the president of the board of supervisors duly authorized by resolution executed a deed conveying the timber to appellant. So whatever may be the decision of the court on the legal questions raised in this case, and its companion case No. 22240 there is no escape from a reversal of the decree in this cause on account of the last purchase and the payment of the purchase price.

F. C. Hathorn & A. A. Hearst, for appellee.

Ordinarily under the facts in this record, there would be no question about the liability of defendant for four thousand, five hundred dollars, the value of the timber agreed upon, with interest from the time it was cut to the date of the judgment. This liability of a tenant of a sixteenth section for waste is fixed by the decisions of our supreme court in the cases of Warren County v. Gans, 80 Miss....