Todhunter v. Price
| Decision Date | 04 November 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 37928,37928 |
| Citation | 248 Ga. 411,283 S.E.2d 864 |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
| Parties | Ann Patton TODHUNTER v. John D. PRICE, Jr. |
Kice H. Stone, Martha C. Christian, O'Neal, Stone, Brown & Sizemore, P. A., Macon, for Ann Patton Todhunter.
Kenneth R. Waldrep, Charles B. Haygood, Jr., Haygood, Lynch, Meincke & Waldrep, Forsyth, for John D. Price, Jr.
We remanded this divorce case for a jury trial on the issue of a resulting trust in Price v. Price, 243 Ga. 4, 252 S.E.2d 402 (1979). After the trial, the jury returned a verdict but the verdict was not reduced to judgment for over a year. Mrs. Price, now Todhunter, appeals from that judgment contending it does not conform to the jury's verdict. We granted the application to appeal. There is no cross appeal.
Mr. and Mrs. Price were married in 1972 and divorced in 1976 by judgment on the pleadings, reserving the issues of alimony and property division. Mrs. Price remarried and then amended her complaint to claim an interest by resulting trust in the 102-acre tract she and her husband purchased while contemplating marriage. Price v. Price, supra. At the jury trial, she contended that the property was purchased for $30,000, that she contributed nearly $13,000 of the purchase price from the sale of her home in Macon, that the money was paid in July after they were married, and that the property was expressly understood to be theirs jointly, although title was in her husband's name for business reasons. The property was used for their home place as well as for the husband's business. She testified that she helped with her husband's business and managed the home and cleared and cared for about 7 acres around the home. References were made to a lake and shops and buildings on the land, one of which she contends was built using $1,500 in insurance proceeds she had received, but there was no evidence of where those structures were located. Part of the 102 acres, approximating 22 acres, had been sold as lots and she also sought one-half of about $30,000 in proceeds from these sales.
The husband denied that the money from the sale of her Macon house was given to him in order to purchase the property, claiming it was a repayment to him of money she had borrowed during their courtship and a contribution to the family's assets. He contended that he contracted to purchase the property before they were married on July 1, 1972, that he paid for the property on June 9, 1972, with $6,000 cash from his savings account and a $24,000 loan from the Federal Land Bank before she received the equity check from the sale of her Macon home on June 21, 1972, and that the property was his alone and no agreement to the contrary had ever been made. Evidence was also offered that the $24,000 loan had been refinanced with the Federal Land Bank on approximately 80 acres remaining after the lot sales and that $61,000 was currently owed on that debt. He further testified that all their money went into a common fund and that he supplied his wife and her two children by a former marriage with everything they needed, and that she did little to help with his business except maybe answer the phone.
By agreement of counsel the court instructed the jury that the wife was not seeking improved land. Upon hearing all the evidence the jury returned a verdict on February 21, 1979, awarding the wife "fifty per cent (50%) of the unimproved land, with access, subject to forty-five per cent (45%) of the indebtedness ... to the Federal Land Bank." Neither party objected to the verdict at the time. The trial court entered judgment on September 19, 1980, awarding the wife 24.5 acres of unimproved land, after a survey that was not evidence in the case was submitted to the court by the husband.
1. We find no merit to the wife's complaint that the verdict is too vague and ambiguous to be enforced. Neither party objected to the verdict when it was returned by the jury. At that time the meaning and effect of the verdict must have been clear to the parties. If either party felt the verdict was vague and ambiguous, objection should have been made when the verdict was returned so that the jury could clarify its meaning. See West Ga. Pulpwood v. Stephens, 128 Ga.App. 864(3),...
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Roberts v. Aderhold
...this could have led the jury to erroneously conclude that Hillman's contributory negligence barred recovery by Aderhold. Citing Todhunter v. Price,27 Queen v. Lambert,28 and First Union Nat. Bank v. Boykin,29 the dissent also asserts that Aderhold waived his right to challenge the verdict b......
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Lou Robustelli Marketing v. Robustelli
...returned by the jury, at which time "the meaning and effect of the verdict must have been clear to the parties." Todhunter v. Price, 248 Ga. 411, 412(1), 283 S.E.2d 864 (1981). After the foreman published the verdict, the trial court asked whether there was "any reason that the members of t......
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...in the court's failure to require the jury to amend its written verdict to reflect more precisely its intent. Cf. Todhunter v. Price, 248 Ga. 411(1), 283 S.E.2d 864 (1981). 8. In his first enumeration of error, appellant contends that the statutory aggravating circumstances found by the jur......
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