Wilfred Ste. Marie v. E. O. Wells

• Decision Date: 07 October 1919
• Citation: 108 A. 270,93 Vt. 398
• Parties: WILFRED STE. MARIE v. E. O. WELLS
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

108 A. 270

93 Vt. 398

WILFRED STE. MARIE v. E. O. WELLS

Supreme Court of Vermont

October 7, 1919

May Term, 1919.

ACTION OF TORT for fraud in the sale of a farm, and a count in trover. Plea, the general issue. Trial by jury at the March Term, 1918, Orleans County, Slack, J., presiding. Verdict and judgment for the plaintiff. The defendant excepted. The opinion states the case.

Judgment affirmed.

E A. Cook and W. W. Reirden for the defendant.

Frank D. Thompson for the plaintiff.

Present WATSON, C.J., POWERS, TAYLOR, and MILES, JJ., and MOULTON SUPR. J.

OPINION

MOULTON

This is an action in tort for deceit in the sale of a certain farm by defendant to plaintiff, with a count for the conversion of certain personal property. Trial was had by jury, with verdict and judgment for the plaintiff. The case is here on exceptions by defendant.

The defendant excepted to the failure of the trial court to instruct the jury in accordance with six requests to charge made by him. It appears that these requests were not submitted to plaintiff's counsel before the opening argument for defendant as required by County Court Rule 30. But it is unnecessary to pass upon the effect of this rule because nothing is claimed under these exceptions beyond what is presented by the exception to the charge as given presently to be considered, which is the only other exception relied upon.

This exception was taken in the following language: "We except to the submitting to the jury of any question upon the matter of fraudulent representations, because we say there is no evidence that plaintiff relied upon any of the representations." The ground of this exception is general. If, therefore, there is any substantial evidence fairly and reasonably tending to show reliance by the plaintiff upon any one of the various representations here in question, the objection will not avail. In this respect the question is the same as if it had been raised upon a motion for a verdict. Schofield's Admx. v. Metropolitan Life Ins. Co., 79 Vt. 161, 167, 64 A. 1107, 8 Ann. Cas. 1152: French v. Grand Trunk Ry. Co., 76 Vt. 441, 444, 58 A. 722. And so the question here is: Was there substantial evidence from which, if believed, and excluding the effect of modifying evidence, the jury could reasonably infer that the plaintiff relied upon the defendant's representations or any of them? Bass v. Rublee, 76 Vt. 395, 400, 57 A. 965; Latremouille v. Bennington & Rutland Ry. Co., 63 Vt. 336, 344, 22 A. 656. Such reliance was, of course, a necessary element of plaintiff's cause of action. Weeks v. Burton, 7 Vt. 67, 70.

The plaintiff did not testify in terms that he acted in reliance upon defendant's representations in the purchase of the farm. But there is ample authority for the proposition that the fact of reliance need not be proved by direct evidence, but may be inferred from the circumstances; and where the representations complained of are material and of a nature calculated to induce the person to whom they are made to take a certain course of action with regard to the subject-matter of the representations, the question whether he relied thereon in so doing is one of fact for the jury. Nash v. Minnesota Title Ins. & Trust Co., 159 Mass. 437, 443, 34 N.E. 625; Smith v. Chadwick (1884) 9 App. Cas. 184; Hughes v. Twisden, (1886) 55 Law J. Ch. 481; Arnison v. Smith, (1888) 41 Ch. 348, 369. The rule is aptly stated by Lord Blackburn, in Smith v. Chadwick, supra, at page 196, as follows: "I think that if it is proved that the defendants with a view to induce the plaintiff to enter into a contract, made a statement to the plaintiff as would be likely to induce a person to enter into a contract, and it is proved that the plaintiff did enter into the contract, it is a fair inference of fact that he was induced to do so by the statement. * * * * I quite agree that being a fair inference of fact, it forms evidence proper to be left to a jury as proof that he was so induced." The learned judge remarks elsewhere in the course of the same opinion: "I do not think that it is necessary * * * * that the plaintiff should be called as a witness to swear that he acted on the inducement. At the time Pasley v. Freeman was decided and for many years afterwards, he could not be so called." Pasley v. Freeman, 3 Term. R. 51, 12 Eng. Rul. Cas. 235, it will be remembered, is the case generally regarded as the foundation of the modern law of actionable misrepresentation. At the time that decision was rendered (1789) the parties to a suit were by the common law disqualified as witnesses because of their interest in the outcome of the litigation. 1 Wigmore, Evidence, par. 575; Lord Bowen, "Progress in the Administration of Justice during the Victorian Period," Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Vol. 1, 516, 521. So it appears that the principle that reliance, in fraud cases, might be inferred from the circumstances was one of early inception.

Redgrave v. Hurd, (1881) 20 Ch. Div. 1, went to a greater length in the treatment of this subject than did the other decisions cited above. In that case it was said by Jessel, M. R., at page 21, that "where a person makes a material representation to another to induce him to enter into a contract, and the other enters into that contract, it is not sufficient to say that the party to whom the representation was made does not prove that he entered into the contract relying upon the representation. If it is a material representation, calculated to induce him to enter into the contract, it is an inference of law that he was induced by the representation to enter." But this doctrine was disapproved in the English cases cited in the foregoing paragraph, and, it may be noted, the Master of the Rolls himself recanted in Smith v. Chadwick, (1882) 20 Ch. Div. 27, 44, and Matthias v. Yetts, (1882) 46 L. T. 497, 502, holding therein that the inference to be drawn in such a case is one of fact and not of law.

In the case now under consideration, the evidence, taken in the light most favorable for the plaintiff, tended to show the following facts: Plaintiff was a French-Canadian, and unable either to read or write English, although he had resided in this State for three or four years next previous to the transaction in question. Having heard that defendant desired to sell his farm, he went there and had a talk with defendant in regard to the proposed sale, but did not then reach any agreement as to the terms, because he had not enough money to make the payment in cash required by defendant. At this meeting plaintiff did not inspect the farm. A few days later he again went there, and with defendant made a partial inspection. It was at this second visit that the defendant made the representations complained of.

The farm consisted of two hundred and thirty acres, and was originally two farms, one being known as the Kidder Farm and the other as the Hancock Farm. There was also a back lot of fifty acres, partly pasture and partly wooded. Some time before the sale to the plaintiff, defendant had sold to the Black River Bobbin Company all of the hardwood timber on the fifty acre lot, and at the time of plaintiff's second visit to the farm all of this kind of timber had been cut and there were about fifty thousand feet of hardwood logs, the property of the Bobbin Company, and worth about three hundred dollars, piled on the land. ...