Mikiska v. Mikiska

• Decision Date: 10 July 1903
• Docket Number: 13,538 - (162)
• Citation: 95 N.W. 910,90 Minn. 258
• Parties: FRANCIS MIKISKA and Another v. BARTHOLOMEW MIKISKA and Others
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

95 N.W. 910

90 Minn. 258

FRANCIS MIKISKA and Another v. BARTHOLOMEW MIKISKA and Others

Nos. 13,538 - (162)

Supreme Court of Minnesota

July 10, 1903

Appeal by defendants Peter Nicolay and Agnes Nicolay from a judgment of the district court for Scott county, entered pursuant to the findings and order of Cadwell, J. Affirmed.

SYLLABUS

Reformation of Deed -- Mistake.

To justify a decree reforming a deed on the ground of mutual mistake of the parties, the evidence must be clear satisfactory, and convincing; a mere preponderance is not sufficient.

Evidence.

Evidence held sufficient to justify the reformation of certain deeds.

E. W Komarek and Chas. G. Hinds, for appellants.

E. Southworth, for respondents.

OPINION

START, C.J.

Action for the reformation of three certain deeds on the ground of a mutual mistake in the description of the land therein. The trial court found the facts substantially as they were alleged in the complaint, and as a conclusion of law directed judgment for the plaintiffs for the relief demanded. Judgment was so entered, and the defendants Peter Nicolay and wife appealed therefrom.

The only questions raised by the assignments of error relate to the sufficiency of the evidence to support the finding of fact to the effect that there was a mutual mistake of the parties in describing the premises in each of the deeds. The here material facts found by the court are substantially these: On February 10, 1870, the plaintiff Francis Mikiska became the owner of a tract of unplatted land in the now city of New Prague, this state. The plaintiff, in 1877, erected a brick building on the west thirty feet of the tract, and on April 26, 1880, he sold and conveyed this thirty-foot tract, with the right to use the ten feet next adjoining on the east for a common way, to his brother, the defendant Bartholomew Mikiska. But by the mistake of the scrivener who wrote the deed and the mutual mistake of the parties thereto in the description of the tract intended to be conveyed, the deed, as written, purported to convey the west forty feet of the original tract, with the right to use the ten feet next adjoining on the east as a common way. Thereafter the grantee in this first deed occupied the west thirty feet, and no more, of the original tract until January 20, 1894, when he sold and conveyed the thirty feet so occupied by him, with the right to use the ten feet next adjoining on the east as a common way, to his nephew, Frank Mikiska, Jr. The same...