King v. Humphreys

• Decision Date: 10 November 1890
• Docket Number: 91
• Citation: 138 Pa. 310,22 A. 19
• Parties: NORMAN KING v. R. HUMPHREYS ET UX
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

22 A. 19

138 Pa. 310

NORMAN KING v. R. HUMPHREYS ET UX

No. 91

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

November 10, 1890

Argued October 29, 1890

APPEAL BY PLAINTIFF FROM THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS NO. 1 OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY.

No. 91 October Term 1890, Sup. Ct.; court below, No. 715 June Term 1888, C.P. No. 1.

On June 1, 1888, a summons was served in an action of ejectment brought by Norman King against Robert Humphreys and Lilla M his wife, to recover an undivided one third interest in lots 4 and 5 in the plan of the extension of Stewartstown. Issue.

At the trial on January 24, 1890, abstracts having been put in evidence, it was shown that Lewis King died intestate about May 5, 1888, and that Norman King, the plaintiff, Lilla Humphreys, defendant, and Nancy J. Bingham were his children and heirs at law, living at the time of his death. The plaintiff then rested. The defendants put in evidence a deed from Lewis King to Lilla M. Humphreys, defendant, dated May 24, 1886, and acknowledged and recorded the next day, which deed, reciting a consideration of $2,000, it was admitted conveyed the lots in dispute.

In his rebuttal case, Norman King, the plaintiff, was called and sworn in his own behalf. Objection being made to any testimony by the witness as to facts occurring in the lifetime of Lewis King, the objection was sustained exception.

The plaintiff then introduced testimony claimed to establish, in substance, that lot No. 4 was worth about $3,000, and lot No 5, with a dwelling-house on it, at least $4,000; that the consideration of the deed to the defendant, in evidence, was in fact but $100 or $200; that, at the date of his death, Lewis King was in the seventy-eighth year of his age, and at the date of said deed and afterwards had made his home with the defendants; that in June, 1887, he was declared a lunatic, the inquisition finding that he was without lucid intervals from January 1, 1887; that, also in June, 1887, he executed a will, admission to probate of which was refused by the register after a contest as to his testamentary capacity; and that for the last four years of his life he was weak in mind and body and incapable of transacting business.

At the close of the testimony, the court, STOWE, P.J., charged the jury in part as follows:

The court is requested to charge on the part of the plaintiff:

1. The burden is upon the defendants in this action to show that the transaction was fair and honest.

Answer: Affirmed.

The defendants request the court to charge the jury:

1. That there is no sufficient evidence in this case to justify the jury in finding against the deed of Lewis King to Lilla Humphreys, on the ground of undue influence.

Answer: Affirmed.

2. That under all the evidence in this case, the verdict must be for the defendants.

Answer: Refused.

This case has been somewhat tedious, but necessarily so. Cases of this kind, where a party's sanity is under investigation, without they are so clear that one who runs may read, involve consideration of all sorts of things, trifling apparently and unimportant, and an examination of a man's conduct for years, even for his whole life. Yet, when it is all put together, the question you are to decide is, not whether the man is crazy or not, but whether he was, if mentally unbalanced at all, so unsound of mind as to render him unfit to understand what he was about when he made the deed in controversy. . . .

[The first point, however, to start more regularly in this case, is the question whether there was undue influence. I have told the gentlemen in advance, and I tell this jury, there is no evidence of undue influence. That must be understood by the jury, not as assuming there is no case for them to decide, possibly, in view of some other testimony that has been presented in favor of the plaintiff, but upon that question, which means that the party who got this deed made, -- the wife, Mrs. Humphreys, or her husband, -- at the time, or preceding the time, and extending up to the time that the deed was actually made, executed and delivered, had such a control over the mind of the old gentleman that they kept him in a sort of mental duress, so that when he did the act it was not his act at all, but was her act, or that of her husband acting for her. A man comes in to you, and with a pistol at your head makes you sign a check. The physical act is yours, but the mind does not go with it. That is what we call duress. That is a moral and physical duress, which relieves you from the effect of the act. You prove the fact, the law says you are not bound. So a person, old and weak, and sometimes one young and weak minded, and, perhaps, strong minded, influenced by certain relations, confidence in their children or legal advisers or pastors, or others, may be so influenced as to do an act they would not ordinarily have done and ought not to have done; would not have done under other circumstances; and, where the relation between the parties is such that it gives them that control, and the act itself is unreasonable, and one that ought not ordinarily, in the judgment of reasonable people, to be done -- property given away under circumstances that indicated it ought not to be, in view of his relations to his family and society, the law says that the transaction is not binding. On that matter of absolute control, or actual duress, or undue influence, there is not any evidence on which the jury have a right to pass, or on which, if the jury would find a verdict, we could allow it to stand. That is out of the case.]

But there is, however, another matter in this case, which is for the consideration of the jury. Whatever view you may come to with reference to that, for the present at least, is to be binding upon the court, and that is, whether this giving of the property to Mrs. Humphreys here for the sum of $100 or $200, apparently $100, was a reasonable and fair act on his part, in view of what she had done for him, the way she had been acting and treating him, considering the property he had left, and the conduct of the other children, and his disposition to reward her for her kindness. That is, perhaps after all a question that will have to be decided eventually, and more certainly by the Supreme Court, if it should ever go there, whether or not there is sufficient evidence to...