Stevens v. Stanley

• Decision Date: 10 June 1929
• Docket Number: 27821
• Citation: 154 Miss. 627,122 So. 755
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: STEVENS v. STANLEY

122 So. 755

154 Miss. 627

STEVENS v. STANLEY

No. 27821

Supreme Court of Mississippi

June 10, 1929

(Division B.)

1 EVIDENCE. Jury as well as judge is bound by uncontradicted reasonable testimony.

Jury as well as the judge is bound by uncontradicted, reasonable testimony, though oral testimony not otherwise contradicted may be opposed by physical facts or by the facts of common knowledge.

2. TRIAL. Reasonable and well-founded inference of want of bona fides presents case for jury and not for court.

Where a reasonable and well-founded inference of a want of bona fides may be drawn, the case is for the jury and not for the court though court has duty of guarding the line between solidly substantiated direct inferences and those other conclusions which are not of such character, but are conjectures or suspicions or inferences based solely upon other inferences.

Division B

On suggestion of error. Overruled.

For former opinion, see 121 So. 814, 153 Miss. 809.

Overruled.

Loving & Loving, of Columbus, for appellant.

Fraud in order to vitiate a contract must relate to a present or preexisting fact, and cannot ordinarily be predicated on unfulfilled promises or statements as to future events.

Security Finance Co. v. Sharpe, 119 So. 829, 152 Miss. 286; 56 A. L. R. 13; 51 A. L. R. 29.

Mere suspicion is not sufficient to establish fraud.

Willoughby v. Pope, 101 Miss. 808, 58 So. 705.

Fraud is never presumed, and must be directly and specifically charged and clearly proven.

Co-Operative Oil Co. v. Greenwood Agency Co., 148 Miss. 536, 114 So. 397.

Frierson & Weaver and Lincoln & Lincoln, of Columbus, for appellee.

Where the contract was consummated upon its approval at the office of the seller in Iowa, and the notes executed by the buyer were payable at Iowa City, Iowa, such notes are Iowa contracts, and are governed by the laws of that state.

Security Co. v. Sharpe, 119 So. 829.

The rule that parol representations are not admissible to vary the terms of a written agreement has no application to representations which amount to a fraud practiced in procuring such agreement.

Hinkley v. Oil & Pipe Line Company, 119, A. S. R. 564, 573, 132 Iowa 396, 107 N.W. 629; Bonewell et al. v. Jacobson (Iowa), 106 N.W. 614, 5 L. R. A. (N. S.), 436; Barrie v. Miller, 104 Ga. 312, 69 A. S. R. 171, 32 S.E. 840; Dowagiac Mfg. Co. v. Gibson, 73 Iowa 525, 4 A. S. R. 697, 35 N.W. 603; Arnhold v. National Analine & Chemical Co., 56 A. L. R. 20 F.2d 364.

Parol evidence rule does not preclude showing fraud in the inducement of a contract, merely because the contract provides that the writing contains all the terms involved.

4 Wigmore on Evidence (2 Ed.), 2439; 56 A. L. R. 13; Bridger v. Goldsmith, 143 N.Y. 421, 38 N.E. 458, as quoted in the Iowa case of Jordan v. Nelson, 178 N.W. 544, 10 A. L. R. 1464, 1470; Stevens v. Venema, 168 N.W. 531, L. R. A. 1918B, 1145-1146; Stevens v. Pearson, 138 Minn. 72, 163 N.W. 769.

OPINION

GRIFFITH, J.

It is earnestly urged, in an able and persuasive brief on the suggestion of error, that, if we had applied the law of Iowa to the facts in this case, the result must have been an affirmance. So doing, and comparing the facts with those in Security Finance Co. v. Sharpe, 152 Miss 286, 119 So. 829, recently decided by Division A, wherein the law of Iowa was applied and making a careful review of the transcribed records in both these cases, we find that substantially every point made in this case was urged in that case, and that the controlling facts in that case are so similar to this that, in point of applicability of law, the two cases are not to be distinguished. The material facts from which it is insisted in this case that the jury could infer a want of bona fides in the purchaser of the notes sued on were as strongly present in the Sharpe case, and in some respects more so; for in that case...