Jones v. Shepley

• Decision Date: 06 December 1886
• Citation: 90 Mo. 307
• Parties: JONES v. SHEPLEY, Trustee, and others.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

90 Mo. 307

JONES

v.SHEPLEY, Trustee, and others.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

December 6, 1886.

Appeal from St. Louis court of appeals.

D. T. Jewett, for appellant, Jones. John R. Shepley and John D. Davis, for respondents, Shepley, Trustee, and others.

SHERWOOD, J.

This proceeding has for its object the compelling of the trustee, Shepley, to pay over a fund in his hands to the plaintiff. The facts, gathered from the record, are these: The plaintiff and Julia Jones, his wife, were seized of a tract of land as tenants by entireties. The land was in litigation, and, to secure their attorneys in their fees, and certain persons who had become sureties for them on an appeal-bond, they conveyed the land in question, and also a judgment which they had recovered in the St. Louis court of appeals in respect of the same, together with any other judgment which might be entered in the same cause on an appeal from this court to the supreme court, in trust to the defendant John R. Shepley. The deed provided that, in case Lewis Jones and Julia Jones, his wife, should pay all costs and expenses for which the sureties in their appeal-bond might become liable, and should convey one-half the land in case the land should be recovered in kind, and pay over one-half the money which should be recovered in respect of the land, to their attorneys, in accordance with the contract subsisting between them and their attorneys, then the deed should be void; but, in case they should not do this, then the deed provided, in substance, that the trustee should do it for them. And then come the clauses of the deed which provide for the disposition of the remainder of the land, or of the money, and which alone form the subjects of this controversy. First, the deed provides that, in case of recovery of the land in kind, the trustee, after conveying one-half of it to the attorneys, “shall also make and execute a deed in fee-simple, in due form of law, for the remaining half of said land and real estate to said Julia Jones, wife of Lewis Jones, in whom the fee-simple of said real estate is and has been heretofore;” and in case damages shall be recovered instead of the land, the trustee shall pay one-half thereof to the attorneys named, and also the costs of the suit, and the costs of executing the trust, “and the balance remaining of said funds, after the payment of said costs, charges, and expenses, shall be paid over to her, the said Julia Jones, wife of Lewis Jones, as her absolute property.” Before the termination of the litigation Julia Jones died. The litigation resulted in a compromise on the basis of $8,000 damages being recovered by the plaintiff. Four thousand dollars of this seem to have been paid directly to the attorneys, as their fees, in pursuance of the contract recited...