Layson v. Rogers

• Decision Date: 31 January 1857
• Citation: 24 Mo. 192
• Parties: LAYSON, BY HIS GUARDIAN, Respondent, v. ROGERS, Appellant.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

24 Mo. 192

LAYSON, BY HIS GUARDIAN, Respondent,

v.ROGERS, Appellant.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

January Term, 1857.

1. A. executed a deed of gift of a slave to B. with a reservation to the donor during her life-time of “the use and benefit of the labor” of the slave--the donee to take possession at the death of the donor; held, that this deed, being unrecorded and unaccompanied with possession in the donee, was void, under section four of the act concerning fraudulent conveyances (R. C. 1845, p. 526), as against a subsequent purchaser from A., though with notice. (SCOTT, J., dissenting, holding that said section contemplated a deed of gift of an interest to take effect presently in possession of the donee.)

Appeal from Platte Circuit Court.

This was a suit for the possession of a negro slave. The plaintiff, William L. Layson, claimed title by virtue of the following instrument: “For and in consideration of the sum of one dollar, to me paid in hand by Mary C. Layson, for William B. Layson, the receipt of which is hereby acknowledged, and for the love and friendship for said William L. Layson, my grandson, I, Hannah Layson, do hereby grant, bargain and sell to said William L. Layson, a negro boy named James Washington, commonly called Washington. Said boy was born my property, and is a slave for life--reserving to myself the use and benefit of the labor of said boy during my life-time, but at my death to be the property of said William L. Layson; and this deed of gift and bill of sale authorizes and empowers said William L. Layson to take and keep possession of said boy at or immediately after my death. Given under my hand and seal, etc. [Signed] Hannah Layson. (Seal.)”

Rogers, defendant, claimed title to said negro by virtue of a deed of transfer of a date subsequent to that of the deed above set forth. The remaining facts of the case sufficiently appear in the opinion of the court.Gardenhire and Hall, for appellant, cited R. C. 1845, p. 526, Sec. 4; Cook v. Clippard, 12 Mo. 379; Bryson v. Penix, 18 Mo. 15; 15 Mo. 420.

J. W. Morrow, Davis, Wilson and Hardin, Jr., for respondent.

I. The smallest consideration is sufficient. (4 Kent Com. 440; 3 Johns. 491; 8 Cow. 430; Story's Contracts, 431.)

II. A conveyance voluntarily, without delivery of possesion, is good between the parties. (R. C. 1845 p. 526; 3 Litt. 278; 2 Brevard, 38; 9 Gill & Johns. 77; 9 Port. 65; 5 Hump. 392; 7 Harr. & Johns. 257; 5 Pet. 264; 12 Johns. 536.)

III. A voluntary conveyance is good against a subsequent purchaser with notice. (Lancaster v. Doland, 1 Rawle, 231; Foster v. Walton, 5 Watts, 378; 5 Watts, 456; Sprise v. McCoy, 6 Watts & Serg. 485; Hudnal v. Wilder, 4 McCord, 295, 310; Maultin v. Jennings, 2 McMullen, 508; Howard v. Williams, 1 Bailey, 575; Bank of Alexandria v. Patton, etc., 1 Robinson, Va., 500, 540; Carprew v. Arthur et al., 15 Ala. 525; Farmers' Bank v. Douglass, 11 Sm. & Marsh. 472, 548; Bohn v. Headley, 7 Harr. & Johns. 257; Cathcart v. Robinson, 5 Pet. 265, 280; Verplank v. Terry, 12 Johns. 536; Jackson v. Town, 4 Cow. 6 a; 2 Leigh, 84; 3 Grattan, 35; 3 Strobhart, 62.)

IV. It is admitted that Hannah Layson continuing in possession of the slave conveyed, and the omission of the plaintiff to have his deed of conveyance recorded (if it be considered a deed for a consideration not deemed valuable in law), according to the fourth section of the statute upon fraudulent conveyances, makes such conveyance void per se; but it is only as against creditors and subsequent purchasers in good faith. A purchaser with notice cannot claim to be a purchaser in good faith. Actual notice of a prior claim is considered per se evidence of “ mala fides;” that the word purchase, as used in the fourth section, means a purchaser in good faith. Therefore defendant's subsequent purchase, with notice of the plaintiff's prior claim, was made in fraud of his rights, and is void in law. (Jackson v. Burgott, 10 Johns. 459; Dunham v. Day, 15 Johns. 568; Jackson v. Post, 15 Wend. 594; 17 Wend. 27; Sanger v. Eastwood, 19 Wend. 514; 4 Kent Com. 169.)

LEONARD, Judge, delivered the opinion of the court.

There are three classes of cases in which our written law provided, as early as 1816, that the possession of personal property should be considered as the real ownership in favor of creditors and purchasers from the party in possession, unless the true condition of the title was manifested by a deed or will authenticated and recorded in the manner prescribed for that purpose--a gift, from one who continued in the possession notwithstanding the gift--a loan, where the borrower had remained five years in the uninterrupted possession of the thing borrowed--and all limitations of personal property, by way of condition, reversion, remainder or otherwise, where the future right was separated from the present possession. (Act of January, 1816, 1 Terr. Laws, 439.) And subsequently, at the revision of 1845, a similar provision was made in reference to mortgages and deeds of trust of personal property. (Tit. Fraudulent Conveyances, Sec. 8.) The act of 1816 did not originate here, but came to us from Virginia, from whose statute book (12 Henning's Statutes) it has been copied into the laws of several of the western states; and the provision of 1845 was adopted from the Massachusetts act in relation to mortgages of personal property. (Rev. Stat. of Mass., Ch. 74, Sec. 5.) The main, indeed the only, purpose of these statutes being not the protection of the party himself, but to suppress frauds upon creditors and purchasers, which were found to be so easily perpetrated by means of feigned or secret transactions of this character, it has been frequently insisted in the application of them to cases occurring in real life that, if the party has actual notice, it was equivalent to the recorded instrument, and ought to be so considered in construing them, in analogy to the construction that was originally adopted in reference to the required registry of conveyances of real property, in order to render them valid against the same class of persons. Butthis construction has, it is believed, been uniformly rejected in reference to the act of 1816, not only in Virginia, where the act seems to have originated, but also in all the states where it has been re-enacted; the courts holding that the object of the Legislature, in the particular cases provided for, was, whenever the possession was separated from the right of property, to place the latter where the apparent ownership was in favor of creditors and purchasers, unless the transaction was accompanied by a recorded instrument, and in this manner to shut out and conclude in all such cases all questions as to the real title. Accordingly, it was decided in Virginia, in 1811, in Gay v. Moseley (2 Munf. 543), that five years' continued possession of a slave by a borrower transferred the ownership to him in favor of a creditor who had actual notice of the unrecorded deed, and the same doctrine is acted upon in Tennessee (Andrews v. Hatfield, 3 Yerg, 39), and a similar construction seems to prevail in Massachusetts in reference to their provision concerning mortgages of personal property (Travis v. Bishop, 13 Metc. 304); and this court adopted the same construction of the act of 1816, in Cook v. Clippard (12 Mo. 379), where it was determined that the purchaser of a slave from a borrower, who had continued in possession five years without any recorded instrument manifesting the loan, acquired the title, although he purchased with full knowledge of the circumstances. These decisions, we may remark, do not conflict with the English adjudications upon their registry laws. These acts contain no exception excluding from their operation a party having notice, and the English law courts never ventured to put such an exception into them by construction. It is true, the English court of chancery did this substantially by holding that, although the statute bound the legal title, the notice bound the conscience of the second purchaser, and converted him, notwithstanding the statute, into a trustee of the legal title for the benefit of the party who by his first purchase was justly entitled to the land; but...