Opitz v. Hayden

• Decision Date: 30 March 1943
• Docket Number: 28808.
• Parties: OPITZ v. HAYDEN.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

135 P.2d 819

17 Wn.2d 347

OPITZ v. HAYDEN.

No. 28808.

Supreme Court of Washington, En Banc.

March 30, 1943

Suit by Elsie I. Opitz against W. H. Hayden, as administrator of the estate of Spencer E. Anderson, for allowance of a creditor's claims based on a note and a written contract. Judgment for plaintiff, and the defendant administrator appeals.

Affirmed.

MILLARD BEALS, and MALLERY, JJ., dissenting. Appeal from Superior Court, King County; J. T Ronald, Judge.

Hayden Merritt, Summers & Bucey, of Seattle, for appellant.

Chadwick, Chadwick, & Mills, of Seattle, for respondent.

STEINERT Justice.

Plaintiff brought suit in the superior court against the administrator of the estate of Spencer E. Anderson, deceased, and in her complaint sought allowance of a creditor's claim which she previously had filed against the estate, but which the administrator had rejected. The claim was based on the decedent's promissory note and on a written contract entered into between the plaintiff and the decedent about seven years prior to the latter's death. The administrator resisted the action in the superior court on the grounds that the above-mentioned instruments were obtained from the decedent through duress and that they were unsupported by any good or valuable consideration. The cause was tried to the court, without a jury. The court made findings of fact, from which it concluded that plaintiff's claim should be allowed. Judgment was entered accordingly, and the defendant administrator appealed.

While this action is, in form, a suit upon contract, the real issues in the case involve the alleged seduction of the respondent by the decedent, a consequent period of illicit cohabitation between them, and finally a controversy culminating in a written agreement under the terms of which the decedent acknowledged respondent's asserted claims against him and, in settlement thereof, obligated himself to contribute to her support and maintenance during the remainder of her lifetime.

The evidence, comprising over four hundred pages of testimony supplemented by seventy-two written exhibits, is devoted almost exclusively to a portrayal of the relations existing between the respondent and the decedent from September, 1919, to May, 1934, a period of nearly fifteen years. There is no serious dispute as to the facts, but rather as to the inferences and conclusions to be drawn therefrom and as to the law applicable thereto.

Respondent, Elsie I. Opitz, was born in York, Nebraska, in 1900. She was, by many years, the youngest of seven children in the family. Her mother died when respondent was fourteen years old. Three years later, her father, then nearly seventy years of age and a semi-invalid, moved to Seattle, bringing with him the respondent and one of her sisters. A short time thereafter the sister married. About that same time, or probably a little later, another sister, who was a widow, came with her two children to live with her father, and this family of five thereafter resided together in Seattle until the death of the father in 1924.

After moving to Seattle, respondent obtained employment for a while in a photographic studio and in 1918 took a course in a business college. She then secured a position with an exporting and importing firm, where she remained for six or eight months. She quit that position voluntarily, intending to seek a more desirable one. In September, 1919, an employment agency referred her to the Universal Savings & Loan Association, a financial institution in Seattle, owned or controlled by Spencer E. Anderson, the decedent whose estate is here involved. He at once employed her as a secretary and stenographer, at a salary of $75 a month, which was later increased to $100 a month.

Up to that time respondent had been a girl of unblemished virtue. She came from a Christian family, had attended Sunday school regularly, and was familiar with the teachings of Scripture. She had not had much social contact with men or boys. Although she was seemingly attractive in appearance and personality, she had never attended parties or dances. While living in Nebraska, she associated almost entirely with girl companions and friends of her own family. Her ideal of a happy life was marriage attended with children, and for these she had a normal desire. She had little conception, however, of the significance of sexual relations. She seems to have had the idea that, as between people who were sincerely in love with each other, sexual intercourse was a natural experience, although she had heard of the trouble that it sometimes brought to unmarried persons.

Spencer E. Anderson, her latest employer, was a man then forty years of age, twenty years respondent's senior. He was tall, slender, vivacious, and possessed of a genial disposition. He had been married since 1904 but had no children. He was strong in his propensities toward the female sex and was at that time maintaining a clandestine relationship with a woman acquaintance.

The quarters in which the business of the Universal Savings & Loan Association was conducted were small but had a private office, and respondent was the only hired employee therein. The employer and employee were therefore in close and constant contact with each other.

At first, and for a short time, the relationship between the parties was of the kind normally existing in a business office where the employer is affable and pleasant, and the employee efficient and agreeable. Occasional jokes and witticisms by him kept her in a happy frame of mind. She knew, however, that he was married. As time went on, his attentions toward her became more personal. He began writing her 'little love notes' and addressing her in affectionate terms. Frequently, a stay after office hours resulted in his embracing and kissing her. Then followed suggestions by him for evening appointments for dinners, automobile rides, and shows. At his solicitation, she began to accept the invitations.

Interwoven in these advances by Anderson were his divulgences to respondent of facts concerning his marital life. He confided to her from time to time that morally he had divorced himself from his wife years ago; that, though living together, he and his wife were going their separate ways, having no mutual interest in each other. He dwelt upon the fact that he had no children, which were his soul's desire, and that he longed to be married to a woman who would give him babies. In time, he began professing his great love for respondent, characterizing her as the girl of his dreams. He announced his firm intention to divorce his wife and his yearning to marry the respondent as soon as his marital status and certain financial conditions would permit. He also confessed that because of his present home life he was carrying on a meretricious relation with a woman who was not his wife, but avowed that because of his great love for respondent he could no longer think of keeping up his association with the other woman. He further expressed his fixed belief in trial marriage as the basis for a contented and happy married life.

In the course of these conversations, Anderson also told respondent that in time he was expecting from his father a large inheritance, explaining that through an original investment of $5,000 in stock of the Ford Motor Company his father had realized a fortune of $13,000,000. It appears that his representations in that matter were at least to some extent true, although the record does not disclose the amount or value of his father's estate or how much thereof was in time actually received by Anderson.

These attentions on the part of Anderson kept up steadily for several months and finally led to suggestions and importunities by him for sexual intercourse with respondent, on the representation that it would be the true test of their love for each other. He painted the experience as a trial marriage, to be followed ultimately with real marriage after he had obtained a divorce from his wife.

In consequence of the attentions showered upon her by Anderson, respondent fell deeply in love with him, but for a while she resisted his suggestions for sexual intercourse. Finally, however, one evening in March, 1920, in his private office, she succumbed to his efforts and surrendered her virtue and virginity to him. That was the beginning of a continuous sexual relationship, lasting for years and interrupted only by periods when the two were temporarily separated from each other. Throughout the entire relationship, Anderson always protested his undying love and loyalty to respondent and, as evidenced by his many letters, made part of the record, kept constantly telling her that he was going to divorce his wife just as soon as his financial condition would permit.

About a year after the first act of sexual intercourse, respondent became pregnant and, two months thereafter, at the insistence of Anderson, who made the necessary medical arrangements, she submitted to an abortion. The operation was performed at 11 o'clock in the forenoon of a certain day, and at noon of the same day she met Anderson downtown in Seattle and was taken by him to a hotel. Later in the afternoon, he drove her to the vicinity of her home, and she went the rest of the way on foot. The next day she reported for work and continued to do so regularly thereafter. This course of procedure was adopted in order that her family might not learn of her predicament. Respondent testified that as a consequence of that experience her health sustained an impairment from which she has never fully recovered. However, the relations between her and Anderson were resumed and continued as Before .

In 1923, at the order of the state authorities, the financial institution operated...