Riggan v. Green

• Decision Date: 31 January 1879
• Citation: 80 N.C. 236,30 Am.Rep. 77
• Parties: JOSEPH H. RIGGAN and others v. SIMON T. GREEN and others.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

30 Am.Rep. 77

80 N.C. 236

JOSEPH H. RIGGAN and others

v.SIMON T. GREEN and others.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

January Term, 1879.

CIVIL ACTION heard upon exceptions to referee's report, at Spring Term, 1878, of FRANKLIN Superior Court, before Seymour, J.

The plaintiffs as heirs at law of Joseph H. Riggan, sued to recover a tract of land, and defendants claim the same land under a deed of plaintiffs' ancestor to James T. Brown and a deed from Brown to them. The plaintiffs' reply to the defence set up that the deed of Joseph H. Riggan to James T. Brown was executed at a time when the grantor was of unsound mind and not of capacity to execute a deed, and to this the defendants rejoin, that they and Brown under whom they claim purchased of Riggan for full value and without notice of any incapacity on his part to make the sale, and that the purchase money paid went to the benefit of the grantor and his family.

After the parties were at issue on pleadings filed as aforesaid, the cause was by consent referred to William H. Battle as referee, with power, sitting as a chancellor, to decide upon the facts and all matters of law and equity, and with liberty to the parties to except only to his legal conclusions.

The referee made report of the facts found and his conclusions of law thereon adverse to plaintiffs' right of recovery, and on exception to his conclusions of law, His Honor overruled the exception and gave judgment in conformity to the report, and the plaintiffs appealed.Messrs. Batchelor & Edwards, for plaintiffs .

Messrs. J. J. Davis and Gilliam & Gatling, for defendants .

DILLARD, J. (After stating the case.)

Under our present system the distinctive principles formerly applicable in the separate courts of law and equity are now to be recognized in the superior courts, and such a judgment and decree is to be pronounced, as the equitable rights of the parties may require. And in conformity to this idea, the order of reference in this case was drawn, giving the referee power to deal with the matters under investigation, as a chancellor under a bill to set aside the deed of a lunatic. Considered in this point of view, it becomes material to inquire what is the effect of the deed of a lunatic for land, and for what and under what circumstances will such a deed be set aside, and a recovery allowed of the property conveyed.

The doctrine as to the effect of the deed of a lunatic is thus laid down by Blackstone, vol. 2, p. 295: “Idiots and persons of non-sane memory, infants and persons under duress, are not totally disabled to convey or purchase, but sub modo only; for their conveyances and purchases are voidable and not actually void.” In 2 Kent's Commentaries, 451, it is said, “that sanity is to be presumed until the contrary be proved, and therefore by the common law a deed made by a person non compos mentis is voidable only, and not void.” By our statute law, a deed executed and registered passes a seisin, and by the decisions under said statute the registration of a deed of bargain and sale is equivalent to livery of seisin in a feoffment; Bat. Rev. ch....