Van Fleet v. Lindgren

• Decision Date: 10 December 1958
• Parties: Waller VAN FLEET, Petitioner, v. A. W. LINDGREN and Anna Belle Lindgren, his wife, Respondents.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

Page 381

107 So.2d 381

Waller VAN FLEET, Petitioner, v. A. W. LINDGREN and Anna Belle Lindgren, his wife, Respondents.

Supreme Court of Florida.

Dec. 10, 1958.

Talbot W. Trammell, Miami, for petitioner.

Thomas H. Anderson and Anderson & Nadeau, Miami, for respondents.

THORNAL, Justice.

By petition for certiorari petitioner Van Fleet requests us to review a decision of the District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District, on the ground that that decision conflicts with a prior decision of this court on the same point of law.

We are called upon to determine whether the decision of the District Court of Appeal in Lindgren v. Van Fleet, Fla.App.1958, 101 So.2d 155, conflicts with the prior decision of this court in Foxworth v. Maddox, 103 Fla. 32, 137 So. 161.

Van Fleet filed in the Circuit Court a complaint praying for the specific enforcement of an alleged contract for the conveyance of land. He asked that Lindgren and wife be required to convey the land to him. He also asked that the conveyance be executed by one Spechler and wife, whom he alleged had acquired title from the Lindgrens with notice of the Van Fleet contract. There was an alternative prayer for damages in the event of denial of specific performance. The Chancellor granted the requested relief for specific performance and entered a decree accordingly. By the decree he directed Lindgren and wife as well as the Spechlers to execute conveyances to Van Fleet. Numerous defenses were pleaded in the specific performance suit. We discuss only one of them here because the others are not before us for consideration. Lindgren and wife appealed to the District Court of Appeal of Florida, Third District, which rendered its decision appearing in 101 So.2d 155.

An examination of the cited decision of the Court of Appeal will reveal that that court decided that the decree of the Chancellor was erroneous as to Mrs. Lindgren for the reason that she had not joined in the contract of sale in order to waive her dower rights as required by Section 708.07, Florida Statutes, F.S.A. With reference to Mr. Lindgren, the original seller, the Court of Appeal decided that the decree of the Chancellor was erroneous because in the view of the appellate court Van Fleet, the purchaser, had orginally proceeded on the theory that he was entitled to a conveyance by both husband and wife as a result of the wife's participation in the negotiation and her acquiescence therein resulting in an estoppel that would preclude her from denying her consent to the original transaction. From this premise the Court of Appeal then apparently reasoned that even if the circumstances revealed by the record would otherwise justify an order directing the husband alone to execute a deed, he should not be required to do so in this instance because Van Fleet, the purchaser, had insisted upon complete performance by both parties in the lower court.

The decisive point of law assaulted by the petition for certiorari now here was announced by the Court of Appeal as follows:

'Assuming (but without deciding), that, in the circumstances revealed by the record, the appellee could have required the conveyance to him of the appellant husband's right, title and interest, subject to the appellant wife's inchoate dower interest, and without any abatement of the purchase price, he did not offer (as did the vendees in Bland v. Knoblock, 92 Fla. 254, 109 So. 415) to accept such partial performance, but insisted on his claimed right to the relinquishment of the dower interest and to complete performance. His position is predicated on the argument that the appellant wife's attitude and conduct were such that 'in equity and good conscience' she should not be permitted to invoke and rely on the provisions of section 708.07, supra.'

Pursuant to Article V, Section 4, Florida Constitution, F.S.A., which authorizes us to review by certiorari 'any decision of a district court of appeal * * * that is in direct conflict with a decision of another district court of appeal or of the supreme court on the same point of law,' the petitioner contends that the subject decision of the Court of Appeal comes into direct conflict on the cited point with the prior decision of the court in Foxworth v. Maddox, supra. We issued the writ and now proceed to dispose of the problem after the filing of briefs and hearing oral arguments.

By the quoted language from the Court of Appeal opinion it appears to us that that court was of the view that the failure of the original plaintiff-purchaser Van Fleet to lay specific claim in his complaint to a deed from the original vendor-husband subject to the...