Jones v. Hawk

• Decision Date: 14 July 1911
• Citation: 64 Wash. 171,116 P. 642
• Court: Washington Supreme Court
• Parties: JONES et al. v. HAWK et ux.

116 P. 642

64 Wash. 171

JONES et al. v. HAWK et ux.

Supreme Court of Washington

July 14, 1911

Department 1. Appeal from Superior Court, Spokane County; Henry L Kennan, Judge.

Action by Homer S. Jones and others against Ulysses F. Hawk and wife. Judgment for defendants, and plaintiffs appeal. Affirmed.

F. W. Girand, for appellants.

Cullen Lee & Foster, for respondents.

FULLERTON J.

In the early part of the year 1910, the respondent U. F. Hawk, then owning certain real property situated in the city of Spokane listed the same with Rogers & Rogers, real estate brokers for sale. The matter was put in the hands of one R. H. Newman, who later on approached the respondent, and informed him that he had a client who had a farm that he might exchange for his city property, and inquired of him whether he would consider such a proposition, and, on his giving an affirmative answer, introduced him to one L. L. Ratliff as the person owning the farm. Negotiations were thereupon taken up between them, Ratliff representing himself as owner of the farm and Newman advising and assisting the respondent Hawk. After some delay the negotiations resulted in two certain written agreements for the exchange of properties, Hawk agreeing to pay a considerable sum in money as the difference between the respective values of the properties agreed to be exchanged. Pending the final closing up of the deal, the respondent became convinced that he had been overreached in the transaction, that he had agreed to pay for the farm a sum greatly in excess of its actual value, and repudiated the agreement. This action was thereupon begun to enforce a specific performance. The trial court after a full trial refused to enforce the agreements, and this appeal followed.

That the respondent was overreached in the transaction the evidence abundantly shows. He was induced to agree to pay some $32.50 per acre for a tract of 420 acres of land which was not worth at that time to exceed $12 per acre. Whether he exercised that due diligence to ascertain the conditions which a reasonably prudent person should exercise before entering into a contract of such magnitude is a more serious question, and one on which the evidence is much less satisfactory. The false representations inducing the purchase related chiefly to the character and value of the land although it may be worthy of mention that Ratliff, the purported owner, had no interest in the land at all, although he signed the contract agreeing to convey along with the true owners, and that Newman, who pretended to be the adviser and assistant of the respondent, was actually in the employment of the other side. The land was represented to be first-class farming lands, capable of producing average crops for land of that character under ordinary tillage, and having a given area in cultivation and capable of tillage; whereas the land was not first-class farm land, but was, on the contrary, what is known in that locality as 'scab land,' having a very light soil, which will produce an average crop only in those seasons when the rains are peculiarly favorable, and that it had a much less area capable of being tilled than was represented. The respondent visited the place but once before making the trade. He arrived there late in the evening of one day and left in the afternoon of the next. According to his own statement, he made no close inspection of the property, but simply looked at it generally, such an inspection as could be made by a hurried walk across a field; the time at the farm being taken up principally in...