Locke v. Keiler

• Decision Date: 11 March 1907
• Docket Number: 11,993
• Citation: 43 So. 673,90 Miss. 3
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: ERNEST R. LOCKE ET AL. v. FRIEDMAN KEILER ET AL

43 So. 673

90 Miss. 3

ERNEST R. LOCKE ET AL. v. FRIEDMAN KEILER ET AL

No. 11,993

Supreme Court of Mississippi

March 11, 1907

FROM the chancery court of Leflore county, HON. CAREY C. MOODEY Chancellor.

Locke and others, the appellants, were complainants in the court below; Keiler and others, the appellees, were defendants there. From a decree partly in complainants' favor the defendants appealed to the supreme court and the complainants prosecuted a cross-appeal.

The sole question decided in the case turned upon an enquiry whether the judicial sale of the property in controversy made in November, 1886, was invalid by reason of the purchaser having fraudulently induced prospective bidders not to bid against him at the sale.

Reversed and bill dismissed.

Gwin &amp Mounger, for appellants.

Green &amp Green, McClurg & Gardner, and L. P. Yerger, for appellees.

OPINION

WHITFIELD, C. J.

We have been at the pains of careful and repeated examination of the facts in respect to the sale in November, 1886, as, indeed of the whole record. When the chancellor was asked to set aside that sale, the question presented to him for solution was this: Does the evidence show clearly and convincingly that the corrupt agreement was made, and that the land was grossly sacrificed in consequence of that agreement? Or, to put it differently, is the court warranted, by testimony clear, convincing, and satisfactory, that the fraud alleged has been established? It would be idle to attempt to set out a full review of all the facts in this voluminous record. Suffice it to say that we have examined them, not once, but repeatedly. We have weighed them in every aspect in which the subject can be viewed, under the well-settled rule that fraud must not only be proven clearly and convincingly, and we are driven to the conclusion that the evidence in the record, taken as a whole, fails to meet the rule--fails to satisfy clearly and convincingly that there was such fraud as is alleged. There are many things which, if they were looked at by themselves alone, tend more or less strongly, some of them quite strongly, to sustain the bill; but when this evidence is put in the balances, and weighed against the countervailing evidence, and the whole case made by the facts is tested by the rule we have stated, we cannot fail to hold that the chancellor erred, and manifestly erred, in setting aside the sale of November 1, 1886. Fraud is not a...