Warner v. Sibley
| Decision Date | 16 April 1884 |
| Citation | 53 Mich. 371,19 N.W. 40 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | WARNER v. SIBLEY. |
A grantee gets no better title to land than his grantor had.
A pretended assignment of a land certificate to avoid a notice of lis pendens, when there is good evidence that it was not made until after the notice was filed, will not be sustained and an absurdly small consideration, the surroundings of the parties, and subsequent attempts to get advantage of the claimant of the land, will be taken as evidence of bad faith in the parties to the assignment.
A person having no reason to question the rights of a patentee may rely upon his title as valid.
Knowledge possessed by an attorney cannot be imputed to his client when it is not obtained in doing business for that client.
Where in an action to establish the rights of parties to real property, it was found that W. owned the land, but that S acting in bad faith, and being a party to another's fraud, had obtained a patent to it, upon the strength of which he had mortgaged it to C. in good faith, held, that W., upon paying C.'s mortgage, would be subrogated to her rights as against the mortgagor, but that he would be entitled to no costs against her in the action, although she signed the appeal bond.
Appeal from Calhoun.
A.M. Culver, for complainants.
John C. Patterson and Wm. H. Brown, for defendants and appellants.
The bill in this case was filed to compel the establishment of the rights of Mary Warner as devisee of Asahel Warner deceased, to the ownership of a 40-acre lot in Calhoun county, described as the S.E. 1/4 of the N.W. 1/4 of section 16, in town 2 S., of range 4 W., which is claimed by Reuben C. Sibley and Caroline L. Cameron, his mortgagee, under a state land-office patent issued to Sibley, in 1874, as assignee of a land-office certificate, numbered 7,611, issued to Hall in 1862. The ground of the claim is that this certificate was issued in lieu of an earlier one, dated in 1883, issued to William and Nathan Darling, for 120 acres. It is shown that the Darlings assigned this 40-acre tract to James D. Williams in January, 1856, but did not deliver him the certificate because it included the other lands, and in January, 1862, Williams assigned to Asahel Warner. In 1861 the certificate itself was assigned to defendant Hall, who is charged to have known of Warner's rights. After Warner's purchase he had the land assessed in his name, and it so continued, and Warner paid the taxes until his death, and his estate has since paid them, except that for 1878 and 1880 Sibley got receipts. In October, 1862, Hall, by using the Darling certificate, was enabled to get out certificate 7,611 in his own name in lieu of it. In the beginning of 1868, Warner seems to have discovered that Hall was meditating mischief and at once notified the land-office not to issue a patent. On the fifteenth of February, 1868, Warner was notified by the secretary of state that a patent had been applied for, and that unless legal proceedings were at once begun it would have to be issued. This application was made in Hall's name, to whom a patent was issued, but at...
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