Rankin v. Simpson
| Decision Date | 01 January 1858 |
| Citation | 19 Pa. 471 |
| Parties | Rankin versus Simpson. |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Banks and Drum, for plaintiffs in error, the Court declined to hear.
White, with whom was Foster, for defendants in error.
This is another case under the statute of frauds and perjuries, and many of the observations made in the case of Moore and wife v. Small, decided at the present term, are applicable here. The plaintiffs, having the legal title to the land, instituted this action of ejectment to recover the possession. The defendants resisted the plaintiffs' right to recover on the ground that William Rankin, the father of the plaintiffs, in his lifetime, made a parol sale of the land to Andrew Simpson, in consideration of his moving on the farm and taking care of Margaret Rankin, an insane sister of William Rankin, and that he had fully performed the contract on his part. The defendants are to be regarded as standing in a Court of Chancery, asking for a decree of specific execution of the alleged contract. They ask, in effect, that the legal title of the plaintiffs shall be conveyed to them.
Their case rests in parol, and, primâ facie, is within the statute of frauds and perjuries. The burthen of taking it out of the operation of that beneficial statute is on them. How do they do it? By proving the declarations of William Rankin to indifferent parties, that he had made such an arrangement with Simpson, and that Simpson had taken possession in pursuance of the contract.
But the plaintiffs meet this by proving Simpson's declarations that the farm was not his, but Rankin's, and that he had the use of it for taking care of the idiot sister. A contract is the agreement of two or more minds, on a sufficient consideration, to do or not to do a certain thing, and when it is to be proved by the declarations of the parties, and these declarations stand opposed as the poles of a needle, how can a contract be said to be proved? Where was the concurrence, the agreement of the two minds? No witness was present when it took place.
The persons who heard the parties talk about it understood one thing from Rankin and another from Simpson. Rankin accounted for Simpson's possession as a purchaser. Simpson insisted he was a renter, and now on Rankin's declarations and in opposition to his own, he asks that the title be decreed to him. It is time that such demands should cease to be countenanced.
If a party call on Courts to execute parol contracts for land in spite of the statute of frauds and perjuries, let him prove a contract. Because he can find persons who remember the owner's loose or casual declarations indicative of a sale, shall he have a decree in disregard of the statute, and in opposition to his own declared convictions? The chancellor has never lived who would tolerate such a demand. Patents and deeds and wills would be a solemn mockery if they might be trifled with and set aside in this manner.
But the plaintiffs show more infirmities still in the claim set up by the defendants for the legal title.
On the first day of September, 1834, Simpson being then in possession of the farm,...
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...sale as a chancellor would have decreed the specific performance of: Hugus v. Walker, 12 Pa. 173; Moore v. Small, 19 Pa. 461; Rankin v. Simpson, 19 Pa. 471; Railroad Knowles, 117 Pa. 77; Shellhammer v. Ashbaugh, 83 Pa. 24. The declarations of the father as to the son's ownership, made in th......