Johnson v. Fecht
Decision Date | 13 May 1902 |
Citation | 68 S.W. 615,94 Mo. App. 605 |
Parties | JOHNSON v. FECHT. |
Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
3. An agent wrote to his principal, "We have sold the forty acres on the south side of the road for $1,000," etc. The principal, in his reply, acknowledged the receipt of "your favor * * * regarding the forty-acres tract of land," and directed the deed to be forwarded for signing. No further description of the land was contained in either letter, nor was the name of the vendee mentioned, nor the fact that the agent had given a contract of sale. Held, that the description was insufficient to confer authority, under Rev. St. 1899, § 3418, which provides that "no contract for the sale of land made by an agent shall be binding on the principal unless said agent is authorized in writing to make said contract."
4. Where an agent, having no authority to sell certain land, gave a contract of sale of the tract to a vendee, and then wrote his principal that he had sold "the forty acres on the south side of the road for $1,000," but did not mention the name of the vendee, nor that he had signed a contract of sale in the principal's name, a letter in reply by the principal, acknowledging the receipt of "your favor * * * regarding sale of the forty-acres tract of land," and directing the deed to be forwarded for signing, was not a ratification of the contract of sale, as the principal could not ratify the contract without knowing its full terms.
Appeal from circuit court, Audrain county; Elliott M. Hughes, Judge.
Action by J. T. Johnson against William Fecht, administrator of the estate of Lorenz Feger, deceased. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed. Case certified to supreme court.
Lorenz Feger formerly lived in Audrain county, where he died on the 17th day of January, 1900; and after his death the demand which is the subject-matter of this controversy was presented for allowance against his estate, of which William Fecht is administrator. The demand is as follows:
"William Fecht, Administrator of Lorenz Feger Deceased, Dr. to James T. Johnson To damages for failure to convey forty acres of land bought of said Feger by Johnson January 5, 1900 $400 00 To cash paid and not returned on said purchase .......................... 50 00 _______ Total ........................... $450 00"
Feger had a farm in Audrain county of 128½ acres, of which 88½ acres lay to the north of a road, and 40 acres to the south. In December, 1899, he was in poor health and went to St. Louis to be treated in a sanitarium. Before going he made a verbal arrangement with Hopkins & Ricketts, real estate brokers in the city of Mexico, to sell said farm for him for $4,000. They sold the portion north of the road to T. B. Hill for $3,000, and notified Feger, who was at the time in St. Mary's Infirmary, in the city of St. Louis. Feger wrote a letter to his nephew, by the name of Dawson, who lived in Audrain county, approving the sale, as follows: On this letter being shown to them, Hopkins & Ricketts made out a deed conveying the 88½ acres to Hill, and sent it to Feger. Feger sent back the deed executed, but imperfectly acknowledged, and it had to be returned to him for reacknowledgment. This was attended to, and when he again sent the deed to Hopkins & Ricketts he inclosed a letter with it, which was lost, but was shown by the testimony of those men to have been written and subscribed with Feger's name in some one's else handwriting, — whose was not shown; and the only circumstance to show Feger sanctioned it was that it came in the same envelope as his deed. Parol testimony of its contents was received by the circuit court, and it was proven to have contained substantially this direction: On the 5th day of January, Hopkins & Ricketts made a contract with the plaintiff, Johnson, to sell him the 40 acres for $1,000, of which he paid $50 at the time, and they executed the following receipt: On the same day they wrote this letter to Feger: They received within a day or so the following answer: The last letter was written by a fellow inmate of the infirmary, by the name of Lee, with whom Feger became intimate while they were in the institution together. Lee acted as amanuensis in writing that letter, which the parol testimony satisfies us was written and signed by him in Feger's presence, and read over to the latter after it was written. On receipt of it Hopkins & Ricketts sent the following letter to him, and inclosed a deed to Johnson for the 40 acres of land, to be executed: ` Feger never executed the deed to Johnson, but sold the land on the 16th day of January to William Fecht, who is his wife's nephew, and now the administrator of the estate, without consulting the agents who had made the sale to Johnson. After Feger's death, Johnson presented this claim for damages on account of the failure to carry out the contract for the sale of the land which Hopkins & Ricketts had made. The case went from the probate court of Audrain county to the circuit court, where there was a judgment for the plaintiff, from which the defendant took this appeal.
Six instructions were given to the jury at the instance of the plaintiff, the purport of all of them being that the above-quoted letter, dated the 6th day of January, and written by Lee for Feger, was a ratification by Feger of the contract made by Hopkins & Ricketts with Johnson. Two of those instructions will be quoted to illustrate the theory propounded: "The court instructs the jury that if Feger, after being notified of the sale made to plaintiff, wrote the letter, or authorized the...
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