Tindel v. Williams
| Decision Date | 14 May 1940 |
| Docket Number | 29272. |
| Citation | 103 P.2d 551,187 Okla. 482,1940 OK 265 |
| Parties | TINDEL v. WILLIAMS. |
| Court | Oklahoma Supreme Court |
Rehearing Denied June 18, 1940.
Application for Leave to File Second Petition for Rehearing Denied July 2, 1940.
Syllabus by the Court.
A habitual drunkard is not as a matter of law incompetent to execute a deed, and as a general rule a deed made by him during a sober interval is binding. But where his mind has become so impaired by long continued habitual drunkenness that he cannot act with an agreeing mind it is voidable, and although he made the deed in a sober interval it is invalid where he was overreached by the grantee who, for a grossly inadequate consideration, procured the deed after substantially contributing to and encouraging said habitual drunkenness.
Appeal from District Court, Carter County; John B. Ogden, Judge.
Action by George K. Williams, through his guardian, Ruth Elliott against Fred R. Tindel, to cancel deeds. From judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals.
Affirmed.
Rehearing denied; Hurst, J., not participating.
C. L Armstrong, of Ponca City, for plaintiff in error.
Williams & Williams and W. W. Potter, all of Ardmore, for defendant in error.
In October, November and December of 1935 the plaintiff George K. Williams executed to the defendant Fred R. Tindel two mineral deeds and a quitclaim deed, conveying all of his 11/45ths interest in 140 acres of valuable oil land. This action to vacate said conveyances is prosecuted by his sister, who was appointed guardian in April of 1938, upon his being declared incompetent. The trial court cancelled the deeds, on the grounds of fraud, incompetency and lack of consideration, and the defendant appeals. The contention is that the judgment is against the weight of the evidence.
The plaintiff, a mixed-blood Chickasaw Indian, lived at Ardmore Oklahoma. In 1932 and 1933, when he was approximately 27 years of age, he came into $37,000 in cash, in addition to his interest in the oil producing royalty mentioned above. He began drinking heavily. He was not at that time acquainted with defendant, but in the latter part of 1932 he met defendant's half-sister and began living with her, later marrying her in 1933. After the marriage he met the defendant, who for a livelihood was selling whiskey in a small home in Ponca City. Plaintiff began patronizing defendant's business, and said business almost immediately prospered greatly. It was not long until the defendant purchased an elaborate night club east of Ponca City, including facilities for dining, dancing and gambling, and a bar at which whiskey, champagne and mixed drinks were served. The establishment also contained separate living quarters for the family, wherein plaintiff and sometimes his wife took up their abode for periods of varying duration, although during the ensuing two years plaintiff frequently visited and remained for a while in Ardmore, Oklahoma City and other places.
The defendant's place of business and living quarters seem, however, to have attracted the chief interest of plaintiff. As time went on, his prodigalities and drinking increased and his fortune diminished, so that by the summer of 1935 his $37,000 cash was gone and by October of 1935 he had conveyed his mineral interests to defendant. In 1936 he was arrested for robbery with firearms and was convicted and sent to the penitentiary at McAlester. Conversely, the defendant in the meantime had gradually prospered, from a very modest bootlegging business in the beginning, to ownership and management of a remunerative night club, and from that into the oil business.
While the plaintiff by no means spent all of his money and time at defendant's establishment, the evidence was sufficient to warrant belief that a substantial part of it was, and that defendant and the nature of his business contributed largely to plaintiff's delinquency. According to the testimony of several witnesses, plaintiff was very drunk and gambling at defendant's place at all times observed by them, and lost much money in that manner. No record exists as to the actual amount which plaintiff drew out of the bank by check while he was in Ponca City, but the following amounts were shown to have been telegraphed him from Ardmore at his request: On August 25, 1934, $500; September 15, 1934, $300; December 17, 1934, $1,000; December 18, 1934, $1,000; December 24, 1934, $1,000; January 19, 1935, $1,000. Also, on August 25, 1934, the date shown above on which $500 was wired him from Ardmore, plaintiff gave defendant a check for $750, which was cashed, making the traceable amount on that particular date $1,250. The thousand dollars per day, noticeable on December 17th and 18th, followed by another thousand in six days, and another thousand shortly afterward, is significant. On several, if not all, of the above telegraphic money orders, the defendant identified plaintiff in order to enable him to receive the money.
Without detailed narration of the testimony of the various witnesses, it is sufficient to say that the plaintiff, apparently not of overstrong intelligence to start with, simply staged a two or three year chronic drunk of surprising intensity and constancy, with the result that his mind progressively deteriorated. That is the ultimate fact of legal importance, and though perhaps some of the events and episodes transpiring during that period would make interesting reading, their recitation is unnecessary. In addition to the lay witnesses, from Ardmore, Ponca City and other places, one medical expert (who did not know plaintiff and had not examined him, however) testified, in answer to a hypothetical question, that under the circumstances delineated therein the plaintiff would not have been competent "to transact business during that time", meaning a period of time including the dates of the conveyances.
The case is not so simple, however, from a legal viewpoint, as the foregoing may seem to indicate. The defendant produced five disinterested witnesses who testified that they observed and talked with plaintiff on the dates and at the places of execution of the conveyances in October, November and December, 1935, that he was sober and apparently normal and capable of understanding, that he did not even appear nervous or jittery. Said witnesses were the notaries public and others in the abstract offices where the instruments were executed, and in the office of the county clerk where the deeds were recorded. One of said notaries had also met and conversed with plaintiff on the street shortly prior to execution of one of the instruments.
From the foregoing paragraph it is apparent that if the reasoning employed herein should parallel the rules relating to the execution of wills by insane persons during lucid intervals we might arrive at a different result. According to the weight of authority, however, a somewhat different application of the rule is made in cases where the grantee in a habitual drunkard's deed is one who helped bring about that condition in the grantor, and especially is this true where inadequacy of consideration is added. Careful analysis of such cases reveals, we believe, that the courts in such instances do not predicate their rulings so much on actual disqualifying incompetency of the grantor as they do on a form of estoppel of the grantee, or fraud. More will be said of that later; for the present we approach the problem from the broader aspect of the rules in general affecting incompetency produced by drunkenness, so that upon reaching the particular point it may be discussed more understandingly.
In cases involving cancellation of deeds for incompetency, the question of adequacy of consideration, though not necessarily controlling, is important. This is particularly true where the element of overreaching enters into the case because of other and additional reasons. The two questions, that of competency and that of adequacy of consideration, are so interrelated in such cases that they are best discussed together, rather than separately. In the instant case there is plausible argument that a fair adjustment of the financial dealings between the parties would indicate a total lack of consideration, but we need not enter into that. Accepting everything contended for by defendant as true, for the purpose of reasoning, the amounts which he says from time to time were advanced to plaintiff would probably not exceed $3,000, while the trial court was authorized to believe that the value of the interest conveyed was in excess of $30,000. A difference of a few thousand dollars either way would not necessarily change the result; we think the finding of a lack of consideration is sustainable at least to the extent of gross inadequacy, which is sufficient under the facts of the particular case before us, there being the additional element of encouraged drunkenness present, as related above.
A deed executed by a person unable to know the nature or circumstances of his act, though his incompetency be produced by intoxication, is voidable, and said deed may be cancelled by himself, although the intoxication was voluntary and not produced by the circumvention of the other party. Coody v. Coody, 39 Okl. 719, 136 P. 754, L.R.A.1915E, 465. It is not, of course, the mere fact of being drunk which avoids the deed. It is the incompetency itself, as that phrase is defined by the law, which is the determining feature. It is the state and condition of the mind that the law regards and not the causes that produced it. If from any cause his reason has been dethroned, his disability to contract is complete. So, as stated, the mere fact that one is drunk when he enters into a contract is no ground for setting it aside, unless the...
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