O'Neal v. Prestwood

• Decision Date: 19 December 1907
• Parties: O'NEAL ET AL. v. PRESTWOOD.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

45 So. 251

153 Ala. 443

O'NEAL ET AL. v. PRESTWOOD.

Supreme Court of Alabama

December 19, 1907

Appeal from Chancery Court, Covington County; W. L. Parks Chancellor.

Six actions by John W. Prestwood and by Emma Tompkins against C R. O'Neal and others, and by John W. Prestwood and others and by Emma Tompkins and others against C. R. O'Neal and against Covington county. From judgments for plaintiffs defendants appeal. Reversed, and judgment rendered in favor of Covington county.

Powell Albritton & Albritton and D. H. Lewis, for appellant O'Neal. A. L. Rankin, for appellant county. Foster, Samford & Prestwood, for appellees.

McCLELLAN J.

Emma Tompkins and John W. Prestwood, the latter of whom derived his rights, if at all, from the former, filed the original bills, under section 809 et seq. of the Code of 1896, against the county of Covington and C. R. O'Neal. These respondents make their answers cross-bills, and conclude with appropriate prayers for the quieting of their respectively asserted titles. There is no insistence here for or against the legality of the admission of any of the testimony introduced. The premises involved are an uninclosed lot, in the nature of a common, in the outskirts of Andalusia, which, on the record, was in the actual possession of no one. The issue, then, as respects the possession at the time the bills were filed, is one of title, which draws to it the constructive possession of the real estate in question. In other words, title is the inquiry which, when determined, will cast the cause.

All the parties undertake to trace their titles to Ezekiel Watson, the father of Emma Tompkins. He is conceded to have owned and been in the occupancy of the lot in controversy prior to the execution of the alleged conveyance to the daughter, and to which we will refer. Mrs. Tompkins rests her claim to the title to the premises upon a voluntary conveyance executed and delivered about the year 1884 by her father to her. We think, under the testimony before us, that there can be no doubt of the execution and delivery of this conveyance, and, unless otherwise ineffectual, it invested her with the title to the lot. The contentions of O'Neal and Covington county, respondents and cross-complainants, will be stated as they assail the validity of the conveyance from Watson to his daughter. Watson was a surety upon a defaulting tax collector's bond, and under an execution issued on the judgment rendered against Watson and others the lot in question was sold and bought in by the county on the fourth Monday in October, 1897, and on October 25, 1897, a sheriff's deed was executed to the county. The action was instituted on September 1, 1896, and the judgment was rendered on May 20, 1897. The county insists that the conveyance to Mrs. Tompkins is null and void as against it, a subsequent creditor of Watson, because of fraud attending its execution and delivery, and also that, if valid, it cannot operate to prejudice the rights of the county, because it was and is an innocent purchaser, for value, and without notice, of the lot described in Tompkins' deed of gift from her father. In reply to these grounds of attack, Mrs. Tompkins asserts that, after the execution and delivery of the conveyance by her father, she took possession of the lot, and both she and her father generally declared her ownership and possession of it; and, further, that if the father was, at the time the voluntary conveyance was made to her, then indebted, and while as to such debts the deed of gift was constructively fraudulent, yet there being no evidence of actual fraud, no right of the county, as a subsequent creditor, was or is impaired thereby; and, further, that the conveyance was properly filed for record, and that the possession by her of the premises was sufficient to put the county on inquiry as to who was repository of the legal title, which, if pursued, would have discovered her ownership of the land.

O'Neal predicates his rights upon this state of facts, as shown by the record: Lewis purchased the lot at a sale under an execution running against Watson, and he, on May 21, 1897 the day after the judgment in favor of the county was rendered, paid the requisite sum and purposely had the quitclaim deed from the purchaser made to Morgan D. Jones, as the gratuitous repository of the title relinquished, and, in turn, O'Neal became the grantee in a quitclaim deed from Jones, and under this instrument he asserts rights in the premises. We may here dispose of his claims. The grantee in a quitclaim deed takes no defined estate in lands, but only such title as his grantor has, incumbered with every equity to which his grantor's interest is subject. Hence such grantee cannot be a bona fide purchaser, within the protection of that class. Smith v. Perry, 56 Ala. 266, among many others. It affirmatively appears from the testimony that Jones became the...