Rogers v. Walker

• Decision Date: 20 September 1847
• Citation: 6 Pa. 371
• Parties: ROGERS <I>v.</I> WALKER.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

6 Pa. 371

ROGERS v. WALKER.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

September 9, 10, 1847.

September 20, 1847.

Sept. 9, 10.

IN error from the District Court of Allegheny county.

Hampton and Loomis, for plaintiff in error, cited Dunlop's Dig. 663; also cite Chase v. Hathaway, 14 Mass. Rep. 222; Ex parte Cranmer, 12 Ves. 455; Neiman v. Ward, 1 Watts & Serg. 78; Parker v. Donaldson, 6 Watts & Serg. 132; Penrose v. Griffith,

4 Binn. 231; Annandale v. Harris, 2 P. Wms. 432; Thurston v. Slatford, 1 Salk. 285; Dickinson v. Barber, 9 Mass. Rep. 225; 2 Bl. Com. 291; Jackson v. Gumaer, 2 Cow. 568; Booe v. Mix, 17 Wend. 119.

Woods and McCandless, contrà.—The contract with the lunatic was absolutely void at her election: 2 Kent, 450; Desilver's Estate, 5 Rawle, 111. And the recovery is without regard to the price paid, or improvements on the land: Tucker v. Moreland, 10 Peters, 73; Shelf. Lun., 2 Law Lib. 419; Neill v. Morely, 9 Ves. 478. Nor can the proceedings be attacked collaterally: they are like other proceedings of courts of competent jurisdiction. The rule is, that after evidence of insanity the burden of showing lucid intervals was upon the defendant: Shelf., 2 Law Lib. 50, 64, 260; Attorney-general v. Parnther, 3 Bro. C. C. 443. They also cited Hutchinson v. Sandt, 4 Rawle, 234; Unangst v. Kramer, 8 Watts & Serg. 401; 4 Barr, 319.

Sept. 20. GIBSON, C. J.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the inquisition and verdict on the traverse of it, were competent evidence in the first instance. The general principle is that an inquisition of lunacy is primâ facie evidence against third persons: the exception attempted is, that proof was not made before the inquest that notice of the execution of the commission had been served, pursuant to the statute, on the plaintiff or any of her friends. But the defect cannot be urged to reverse the proceeding collaterally. The inquisition might perhaps have been quashed for it, on motion to the court from which the commission issued; but as a traverse was taken and found against the traverser, it remained in force and could not be treated as a nullity. As there is an endorsement on the inquisition that the copy of a notice had been left at the plaintiff's house, by a person who does not, however, appear to have been sworn, proof of service might, and probably would, have been made on a motion to quash; but to say nothing of that, the inquisition was actually traversed, by the plaintiff's next friend, and it is settled that want of summons or notice is cured by subsequent appearance.

The direction that the plaintiff might, by her committee, recover back the land conveyed by her when insane, without restoring the purchase-money or compensating the defendant for improvements, was entirely proper. Since the time of Thompson v. Leack, Carth. 435, S. C. 2 Salk. 427, it has been held that a lunatic's conveyance executed by sealing and delivery of it only, is absolutely void as to third parties; and why not void as to the grantor? It is said not to be so for the very unphilosophic reason that the law does not allow him to stultify himself — an early absurdity of the common law, which was exploded with us by Bensell v. Chancellor, 5 Whart 371, in which it was held that a grantor may avoid the deed by showing that he was insane when it was executed. Though for feudal reasons, a lunatic's feoffment is not void but voidable, and though the statute of 1715 gives to recorded conveyances the force and effect of a feoffment, "for the giving of possession and seisin," yet it was held in McKee v. Pfoutz, 3 Dall. 486, and In re Desilver, 5 Rawle, 111, that the intent was no more than to dispense with actual livery, and not to give seisin transferred its feudal qualities and consequences. The plaintiff therefore had a clear title at law; and what right had the defendant to control it in equity? Only the right he may be supposed to have derived from his bargain with an insane woman, who was an object of protection in equity as well as at law. No right can spring from a void and prohibited contract; and the defendant had none. He expended his money on the land of another, who was as...