Plumer & Crary v. Reed

• Decision Date: 08 January 1861
• Citation: 38 Pa. 46
• Parties: Plumer & Crary <I>versus</I> Reed.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 46

38 Pa. 46

Plumer & Crary versus Reed.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

January 8, 1861.

ERROR to the Common Pleas of Clarion county.

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Campbell & Lamberton, for plaintiffs in error, as establishing the doctrine of a resulting trust, under similar circumstances, cited and relied on Beck's Executors v. Graybill & Swartly, 4 Casey 66; Fillman v. Divers, 7 Casey 429; McCulloch v. Cowher, 5 W. & S. 427; Boyd v. McLean, 1 John Ch. R. 582; Story Eq. §§ 1201, 1210; German v. Gabbald, 3 Binn. 302.

If defendants in error did not intend to purchase in trust for Reed as to the ten acres, they obtained it in fraud, and are trustees ex maleficio: Sheriff v. Neal, 6 Watts 540; Hoge v. Hoge, 1 Watts 163; McCulloch v. Cowher, 5 W. & S. 450; Miller v. Pearce, 6 W. & S. 97; Kellum v. Smith, 9 Casey 165; Lynch v. Cox, 11 Harris 268.

George W. Lathy, for defendants in error, cited and relied on Robertson v. Robertson, 9 Watts 32; Haines v. O'Conner, 10 Watts 313; Fox v. Heffner, 1 W. & S. 379; Jackman v. Ringland, 4 W. & S. 150; Barnett v. Dougherty, 8 Casey 372.

The opinion of the court was delivered, January 8th 1861, by WOODWARD, J.

This case resembles in some of its features that of McCulloch v. Cowher, 5 W. & S. 427, and was quite as fit to be submitted to the jury on the question of a resulting trust. If the jury had been satisfied from the evidence, that the plaintiffs induced Reed to surrender his article of agreement, and to facilitate their acquisition of title to the whole tract by promising him a conveyance of the ten acres now in dispute, a trust ex maleficio would arise in his favour as to the ten acres. Equity will not permit one to hold a benefit which he has derived through the fraud even of another, and much less will it do so if he has acquired it by means of his own fraud: Sheriff v. Neal, 6 Watts 540.

It is not decisive against Reed that he had paid very little on his contract; that he had been backward in perfecting his equity, and that he was liable to be turned out of possession. He still held an equitable interest, coupled with the actual possession. He had an estate in the land. Plumer & Crary were iron-masters, and wanted the wood on the land for their furnace, and very likely preferred to extinguish Reed's equities speedily by inducing him to surrender them, rather than buy in the paramount title, and wait for the slow results of the law. Did they extinguish them by the promise of the ten acres? That is...