Watson v. Wall
| Decision Date | 31 August 1961 |
| Docket Number | No. 17830,17830 |
| Citation | 239 S.C. 109,121 S.E.2d 427 |
| Court | South Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | W. C. WATSON, As Administrator Cum Testamento Annexo of the Estate of S. J. Wall, and the Attorney General of the State of South Carolina, Respondents, v. Sadie L. WALL, Individually and as Executrix of the Will of W. Furman Wall, Appellant. |
James B. Dixon, Woods & Woods, Marion, for appellant.
Norton & Norton, J. Malcolm McLendon, Marion, for respondent.
Plaintiff, as administrator c. t. a. of the estate of S. J. Wall, instituted this action in September, 1956, for partition of a tract of two hundred fifty acres, consisting principally of timber land in Marion County, that had been owned by S. J. Wall's mother, Sarah J. Richardson Wall, at the time of her death in 1932, and title to which had thereupon vested in her six surviving children. The complaint alleged that subsequent to his mother's death one of said children, W. Furman Wall, had conveyed his interest in the property to his brother, the said S. J. Wall.
Sadie L. Wall, individually and as executrix of the will of W. Furman Wall, was permitted to intervene as a party defendant. By her answer she alleged that at the time of his conveyance to S. J. Wall, on April 5, 1939, W. Furman Wall was mentally incompetent, and that said deed had been obtained from him by fraud, duress, and undue influence, and for the grossly inadequate consideration of $600; and she prayed that it be set aside upon her payment to the estate of S. J. Wall of said sum, plus interest, or be declared an equitable mortgage and cancelled upon such payment. She appeals from an adverse decree.
By consent of the parties, the timber on the tract of land in question was sold on November 4, 1957, for $133,239.30 and by like consent the land was sold on February 3, 1958, for $23,150. The net proceeds of both sales have been distributed among the parties according to their respective interests, except that $24,149.60, representing the proceeds of sale of the one-sixth interest conveyed by the deed under attack is being held by the Judge of Probate for Marion County pending determination of this action.
Testimony before the Special Referee as to the value of the whole tract in 1939 ranged from $4,000 to $40,000. Its valuation as agreed upon between S. J. Wall and W. Furman Wall for the purpose of the conveyance by the latter of his one-sixth interest in April of that year was $3,600. Without attempting precisely to fix the actual value of the grantor's one-sixth interest at the time of his conveyance of it, the Special Referee found that it was more than the $600 that S. J. Wall had paid for it, but not so greatly in excess of that amount as to shock the judicial conscience. That finding, in which the Circuit Judge concurred, was amply supported by evidence of the very low market values in 1939 of land and timber as compared with the high prices prevailing in 1957 and 1958, and by evidence of the growth of timber during the interval of nearly twenty years between those dates. Also pertinent to the finding was the fact that W. Furman Wall's interest was an undivided fractional one.
The Special Referee, adverting to the conflict in the evidence as to W. Furman Wall's mental and physical condition at the time of his execution of the deed, concluded that he did not at that time have sufficient mental capacity to fully evaluate the property and his interest therein; and that his brother S. J. Wall, a man of superior ability, had taken undue advantage of him in the transaction, particularly by stating to him, in a letter some two months prior to the date of the execution of the deed, that 'it will cost more than your interest is worth to divide it in the courts.' He accordingly recommended that the deed be set aside upon payment to the administrator c. t. a. of the estate of S. J. Wall of the sum of $600, with interest from April 21, 1939, which was the date upon which the consideration for the deed of April 5, 1939, had been paid. We note here that tender of this amount prior to the intervention had been waived, it being agreed that such tender if made would have been rejected.
The Honorable G. Badger Baker, Judge of the Twelfth Judicial Circuit, before whom the cause then came on exceptions to the Special Referee's report, disagreed with the conclusion therein reached, held that the evidence was insufficient to establish fraud or undue influence on the part of S. J. Wall, and dismissed the claim of the intervening defendant.
The issues under the intervention being equitable, the lower court's factual findings are subject to review on appeal and may be reversed if in our opinion they are contrary to the preponderance of the evidence, Simonds v. Simonds, 232 S.C. 185, 101 S.E.2d 494. The burden of convincing the appellate court of such error is of course upon the appellant. Inabinet v. Inabinet, 236 S.C. 52, 113 S.E.2d 66. In approaching consideration of these findings, we bear in mind that fraud is never presumed, Smith v. Traxler, 228 S.C. 418, 90 S.E.2d 482; and that the intervening defendant, having asserted fraud as the ground for the relief sought, assumed the heavy burden of proving it by clear, cogent and convincing evidence. Singleton v. Mullins Lumber Co., 234 S.C. 330, 108 S.E.2d 414; Gary v. Jordan, 236 S.C. 144, 113 S.E.2d 730.
W. Furman Wall, who lived in Spartanburg, had failed in business in 1927, and from then until his death in 1956 was in dire financial straits. After the loss of his business he had lost his home; he was never able thereafter to make a success in business; he took small jobs, such as time-keeper at a military installation and bailiff in the county court house; he became a prey to nervousness and worry; and he took to excessive drinking. In 1939 his only property appears to have been his undivided one-sixth interest in the two hundred fifty acre tract here involved, which had come to him upon his mother's death in 1932. His brother S. J. Wall was a capable and stable man of business, for many years Superintendent of Education for Marion County, where he resided, and later a member of the General Assembly, in which he was serving at the time of his death in 1951. It appears that he had been admitted to the bar of South Carolina, but did not actively engage in the practice of law. The provisions of his will, dated November 8, 1948, which were before this court for construction in Watson v. Wall, 229 S.C. 500, 90 S.E.2d 918, reveal him as a man of considerable property.
Testimony as to W. Furman Wall's mental capacity at the time of the execution of his deed in April, 1939, was conflicting. There was evidence that on September 30, 1939, he was committed by the Probate Judge to the State Hospital as a person of unsound mind; but the information upon which the medical examination preliminary to the commitment was based suggests excessive use of alcohol as the cause of the mental disturbance, and the only conduct certified by the examining physicians as having been observed by them was that the patient was 'very excited and at times very depressed' and 'admits mental condition is not clear'; and on November 18, 1939, the Superintendent of the State Hospital reported to the Probate Judge that after careful study by the medical staff of the hospital Mr. Wall had been found not insane and had been discharged on November 15, 1939. Mr. Thomas M. Lyles, a highly respected member of the Spartanburg bar, testified that he had known Mr. Wall and his family since 1915, and that in his opinion Mr. Wall was not competent to handle any business transaction after he lost his business in 1927. On the issue of mental capacity there were many other witnesses, pro and con. Extensive review of their testimony would be impracticable and, we think, unnecessary, for in our view, as in that of the Circuit Judge, the most convincing evidence is to be found in the correspondence between the two brothers extending over a period of eighteen months immediately preceding the conveyance by W. Furman Wall to S. J. Wall.
On October 10, 1937, W. Furman Wall wrote to his brother, saying that he was 'strictly up against it', having no money and being unable to borrow any, and urging that the property be sold so that he could get his part and 'go ahead again.' To this letter S. J. Wall replied on November 15, 1937, saying that so far as he was concerned he would be glad for W. Furman Wall to sell it, but urging him for his own sake not to do so, but to 'try to keep something to support you when you are helpless and not run through with everything you have and depend on others to support you * * *'.
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