Quigley v. Breckenridge

• Decision Date: 17 June 1899
• Citation: 180 Ill. 627,54 N.E. 580
• Parties: QUIGLEY v. BRECKENRIDGE.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

180 Ill. 627

54 N.E. 580

QUIGLEY

v.BRECKENRIDGE.¹

Supreme Court of Illinois.

June 17, 1899.

Appeal from circuit court, Fulton county; John A. Gray, Judge.

Suit by John F. Bordner against Alfred Bordner and others for partition. To confirmation of sale under decree Eva H. Breckenridge objected, and from an order sustaining the objection Edwin J. Quigely, purchaser, appeals. Reversed.

Lucien Gray, for appellant.

I. R. Brown, for appellee.

On November 16, 1897, John F. Bordner filed a bill for partition against Alfred Bordner and others, heirs of one Jonathan Bordner, deceased, who died intestate on September 19, 1873. Jonathan Bordner, at the time of his decease, was seised of 160 acres of land in a certain section 25, and 20 acres in a certain section 26, in Fulton county, Ill. It was this land which the bill was filed to partition. Decree was entered fixing the interests of the parties in the premises, and finding that Hannah E. or Eva H. Breckenridge was entitled to an interest of one-tenth and one-tenth of one-tenth therein. Partition was ordered according to the interests of the parties, and commissioners were appointed to make such partition. The commissioners reported that the lands were not susceptible of division, and estimated their value to be $12,300. Decree of sale was then entered, directing the master to give notice of sale, and to make sale of the property. The decree of sale provided that, ‘upon the confirmation of the report of the said master in chancery, * * * he shall execute and deliver to the purchaser or purchasers of the premises so sold a proper deed or deeds of conveyance.’ The notice of sale stated that the terms would be ‘cash in hand upon the approval of sale by the court.’ The decree also directed, and the notice provided, that the premises would not be sold, nor either of the tracts embraced therein, unless the bid or bids therefor should be equal to at least two-thirds of the valuation put upon the premises by the commissioners. The premises were sold by the master in chancery of the court on March 12, 1898, at the door of the court house in Lewistown, in Fulton county, for $10,400 in cash, to the appellant, Edwin J. Quigley. The master in chancery made his report of sale, stating that he had offered said lands for sale in separate tracts, as required by law, and offered the same in 80-acre tracts, and also offered the 20-acre tract separately, and then one tract with another added to it, and so on, and then offered the same all together. Upon the coming in of the master's report of March 21, 1898, the appellee, Eva H. Breckenridge, one of the defendants in the partition suit, filed her exceptions to the confirmation of the report. Affidavits were filed in support of the exceptions. A sworn answer was filed by the purchaser, Edwin J. Quigley, the appellant, denying the truth of the matters set up in the exceptions of the appellee, Breckenridge. Affidavits were filed in support of appellee's answer. On May 28, 1898, the circuit court entered a decree sustaining the exceptions to the confirmation of the report, and ordering that the report be not approved and that the sale be set aside, and directing the master to make resale of the property. The appellant, Quigley, who, upon his motion, had been given leave to defend, and had been made a party to the cause, has appealed from the decree of the court setting aside the sale and ordering a resale. The appeal is to this court, and brings before us for review the correctness of the decree so entered by the court below.

MAGRUDER, J. (after stating the facts).

The exceptions of the appellee, Breckenridge, to the confirmation of the master's report of sale, set forth that at the sale the appellant bid for the property by an agent duly authorized and instructed to so bid; that, according to her information and belief, the appellant ‘had prearranged matters with a certain party in interest, who was desirous of bidding upon the said premises, and who was then and there ready and willing to buy said lands at a much larger price than the price upon which the said lands were bid off, but, by reason of the said arrangement with the said Edwin Quigley, he did not bid upon the said premises, and was thereby debarred from bidding.’ The exceptions charge that fraud and deception were practiced by the appellant in deceiving another party, who stood there ready to bid more for the land than the bid of appellant; that there was a great deal of confusion at the time of the sale; that it was raining; that persons were present with umbrellas hoisted over them; that one W. W. Crabtree authorized one Sherman McClouth to bid an amount greater than the bid made by appellant; that, through inadvertence, mistake, or in the confusion of the bidding, the master did not get the bid of Crabtree, but cried the bid of appellant, and hastily struck the property off to appellant's agent for $10,400; that, had the master ‘observed or got’ the bid of Crabtree, the latter was willing at that time and ready to pay $11,500 for the property, and was financially able to pay that amount; that Crabtree stands ready to make his offer good, and to pay $11,500 for the premises. The exceptions filed by the appellee, Breckenridge, were not sworn to. The grounds upon which it is sought by the exceptions, and affidavits in support thereof, to set the sale aside, are-First, that the appellant made an arrangement with Crabtree by which the latter agreed not to bid for the property and thereby to allow the appellant to obtain it; and, second, that, when Crabtree had changed his mind and concluded to bid, there was so much confusion at the sale, by reason of the rain and for other causes, and the property was struck off so hastily by the master, that Crabtree was prevented from making a bid in excess of that made by appellant.

It is well settled by the authorities that any arrangement made for the purpose of reducing competition at a judicial sale is fraudulent and void, and, if the purchaser at such sale is a party to such an agreement, he can take no benefit under his purchase, and the sale will be set aside by the court. Longwith v. Butler, 3 Gilman, 32;Devine v. Harkness, 117 Ill. 145, 7 N. E. 52;Ingalls v. Rowell, 149 Ill. 163, 36 N. E. 1016;Coffey v. Coffey, 16 Ill. 414;Stoker v. Greenup, 18 Ill. 27;Mapps v. Sharpe, 32 Ill. 13;Meeker v. Evans, 25 Ill. 283. The difficulty in the present case is that the testimony does not establish the existence of such an agreement as is alleged to have been made. It is true that, in this class of cases, courts are vested with a sound discretion. The chancellor has a broad discretion in the matter of approving or disapproving of sales made by masters in chancery, especially where, as here, the deed is by the terms of the decree not to be made to the purchaser until after the confirmation of the sale. Jennings v. Dunphy, 174 Ill. 86, 50 N. E. 1045. But the discretion which is thus vested in a court of chancery is not a mere arbitrary discretion, but must be exercised in accordance with established principles of law. Ayres v. Baumgarten, 15 Ill. 444. And a decision, approving or disapproving a master's report of sale, may be assigned for error. Ayres v. Baumgarten, supra; Barling v. Peters, 134 Ill. 606, 25 N. E. 765. In Barling v. Peters, supra, we held (page 619, 134 Ill., and pages 768, 771, 25 N. E.) that, before a judicial sale has been approved, ‘a resale will be ordered, if fraud or misconduct in the purchaser, the officer conducting the sale, or other person connected therewith, is shown, or if it is made to appear that a party interested had been surprised, or led into a mistake, by the conduct of the purchaser, officer, or other person connected therewith. But courts will not refuse to confirm a judicial sale, or order a resale, on the motion of an interested party, merely to protect himself against the result of his own negligence, where he is under no disability to protect his own rights at such sale. Where a judicial sale has been conducted in the usual manner, and the purchaser is a stranger to the order of sale, mere inadequacy of price will not justify a court in vacating a sale, so as to deprive the vendee of the benefit of his purchase, unless the inadequacy is such as to amount to evidence of fraud. * * * While courts should carefully guard judicial sales against all attempts to depreciate the value of the property sold, or to prevent full and fair competition, due regard must also be had to the policy of the law to give stability to such sales.’ Comstock v. Purple, 49 Ill. 158;Duncan v. Sanders, 50 Ill. 475;Heberer v. Heberer, 67 Ill. 253. None of the parties...