Smith v. Smith
Decision Date | 01 December 2006 |
Docket Number | No. 33063.,33063. |
Citation | 639 S.E.2d 711 |
Court | West Virginia Supreme Court |
Parties | John SMITH, and Katherine Sue Smith, his wife, Plaintiffs Below, Appellants, v. Irma SMITH Defendant Below, Appellee. |
Syllabus by the Court
2. "Parol evidence is admissible to establish a mutual mistake in a deed or other written instrument." Syllabus Point 3, Edmiston v. Wilson, 146 W.Va. 511, 120 S.E.2d 491 (1961).
3. If an unambiguous deed fails to express the obvious intention of the parties, a court may seek to arrive at the intention of the parties by resort to parol evidence.
4. A mutual mistake is one which is common to all parties, wherein each labors under the same misconception respecting a material fact or provision within the agreement.
5. To justify the reformation of a clear and unambiguous deed for mistake, the mistake must be one of fact, not of law; the mistake must be mutual and common to both parties to the deed; the unambiguous deed must fail to express the obvious intention of the parties; and the mutual mistake must be proved by strong, clear and convincing evidence.
Jason R. Grubb, Beaver, for John Smith and Katherine Sue Smith.
Richard M. Gunnoe, Gunnoe Law Office, Hinton, for Irma Smith.
The Appellants herein and plaintiffs below, John Smith and Katherine Sue Smith, his wife, appeal from an Order Pursuant to Bench Trial, dated October 6, 2005, by the Circuit Court of Summers County. In the matter before the circuit court, Appellants sought reformation of a deed, dated August 22, 2001, between themselves as grantors and the Appellee herein and defendant below, Irma Smith, as grantee based upon a claimed mutual mistake as to the boundaries of the property which they conveyed to the Appellee. The Appellants argued that there was a mutual mistake as to the property which was intended to be conveyed and the property which actually was conveyed by the deed. The Appellee denied that there was a mutual mistake and contended that the deed conveyed to her the property she understood she was acquiring from the Appellants. Accordingly, it was the Appellee's position that the deed should not be reformed.
In her counterclaim seeking a declaratory judgment, the Appellee asked the circuit court to declare that a reservation in the deed for the Appellants "to use the parking lot located [on the property conveyed by the deed]" is limited, as the Appellee claimed she was led to believe by the Appellants upon delivery of the deed, to a use of the parking lot by the Appellants as a means of ingress and egress to and from property owned and retained by them. The Appellants disagreed claiming that the phrase "to use" reserved to them the right to use the conveyed parking lot for any purpose they should choose, including their right to continue parking thereon a bus which they owned, the holding of social events (especially an annual "apple butter festival") thereon, and the parking of their visitors' vehicles thereon.
Following a bench trial, the circuit court, in its order of October 6, 2005, determined that the granting clause in the August 22, 2001, deed is clear and unambiguous as the Appellants had conceded; that because the deed is clear and unambiguous as to what it granted, parol evidence that the parties thereto made a mutual mistake as to what the grantors (the Appellants) intended to convey and what the grantee (the Appellee) intended to acquire was inadmissible; and that the right "to use the parking lot" which the grantors reserved in the deed is limited to "ingress and egress and occasional parking." Appellants appealed.
We conclude that the circuit court erred in determining that parol evidence to establish and correct a mutual mistake in a clear and unambiguous deed was inadmissible; however, we also conclude that notwithstanding this error, Appellants fell far short in the bench trial of proving by strong, clear, unequivocal and convincing evidence, as required by this Court's prior decisions, that there was a mutual mistake in the deed's granting clause common to both the Appellants as grantors and the Appellee as grantee. We further conclude, based upon the circuit court's determinations, with which we do not disagree, that the phrase "to use" in the context of the reservation clause of the August 22, 2001, deed is ambiguous and accordingly should be restricted to the Appellants' uses of the parking lot at the time of closing. We further determine that a remand is neither required nor in the interest of judicial economy. See Trimboli v. Board of Education, 167 W.Va. 792, 795, 280 S.E.2d 686, 688 (1981). The record herein is complete and was fully developed below, and the issue relating to the use of the parking lot is distinct and limited. From this record, we conclude that in addition to Appellants' use of the parking lot as a means of ingress and egress to and from property owned and retained by them and for their occasional parking as found and ordered by the circuit court, the Appellants proved that they were using the parking lot prior to its conveyance to the Appellee for an annual "apple butter festival" and that, accordingly, they should be allowed that further limited use of the parking lot subject to the restrictions and limitations set forth below.
We therefore resolve the deed reformation issue in favor of the Appellee and interpret the Appellants' reserved use of the parking lot to also include the holding of an annual "apple butter festival" thereon as explained, described and limited below.
The property which the Appellants conveyed to the Appellee by the August 22, 2001, deed was known locally as the Sewell Valley Bank Building property. It was purchased in 1966 by John W. Smith, one of the Appellants, who had his mother, Chlora J. Smith, named as grantee in the 1966 deed. Chlora J. Smith died in 1973 and in her will she devised the Sewell Valley Bank Building property to her son, the Appellant John W. Smith. In 2000, Smith conveyed the property to himself and his wife, Appellant Katherine Sue Smith, with right of survivorship.
In 1978 or 1979, Appellants acquired additional property consisting of a house and one-eighth of an acre on which a house was located that became the residence of the Appellants. Unlike the Sewell Valley Bank Building, which had, and was conveyed by, a metes and bounds description, one-eighth of an acre was the only description provided for the later acquisition. The one-eighth acre adjoined the Sewell Valley Bank Building property and the two properties owned by the Appellants shared a common boundary at the rear of the Bank Building property. The house on the one-eighth acre acquired by the Appellants in 1978 or 1979 was described variously as approximately twenty or thirty feet from the rear of the Bank Building. After they acquired the one-eighth acre, the Appellants dug a well and a structure above it behind the Bank Building, which the Appellants at that time owned. The well, which provided water to both the Bank Building and the Appellants' residence, was situate within an approximate three-foot space between the back of the building and what was then a fence, which the Appellants apparently believed at the time of their signing of the deed marked the common boundary between their two properties. Thereafter, the fence was removed and the Appellants constructed one or more storage buildings, the front wall of which was the rear wall of the well structure.
After the Appellants and the Appellee, who was a distant cousin of Appellant John Smith, agreed upon a purchase price of $40,000 for the Bank Building property, the Appellants engaged Hinton attorney Perry Mann to prepare a deed conveying the property to the Appellee. The deed, as earlier noted, is dated August 22, 2001. The granting clause sets forth a metes and bounds description of the property conveyed and it recites that the property conveyed thereby contains one-eighth of an acre, more or less. The same metes and bounds description had been used in successive deeds to the Bank Building property dating back into the 1800's. The deed contains two reservations, one of which has already been noted, namely, the right of the Appellants to use the parking lot located on the conveyed property. The other reservation, which is not being challenged on appeal, reserves the right to the Appellants "to use the water from a well located on the herein described property [that is, the property conveyed] and the right to maintain said well in conjunction with [the Appellee]." The reservation recites the agreement of the Appellants and Appellee "to share the cost of operating and the cost of maintenance of said well."
Attorney Mann testified that he would have placed into the deed everything requested by his clients, the Appellants. While Mr. Mann could not recall whether he had read the deed to the Appellants and Appellee upon their gathering in his office for the closing, Appellant John Smith acknowledged that Mr. Mann had read the deed, including the metes and bounds description, to the Appellants and Appellee. Appellant Katherine Smith acknowledged that she read the deed before she signed it. Mr. Mann's assistant, Jennifer Gore, assisted Mr. Mann in the preparation of the deed and was present at the closing. Upon being called as a witness by the Appellants, Ms. Gore testified that the...
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