Coleman v. Lucksinger

123 S.W. 441, 224 Mo. 1, 1909 Mo. LEXIS 4
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedNovember 29, 1909
StatusPublished
Cited by28 cases

This text of 123 S.W. 441 (Coleman v. Lucksinger) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Coleman v. Lucksinger, 123 S.W. 441, 224 Mo. 1, 1909 Mo. LEXIS 4 (Mo. 1909).

Opinions

GANTT, J.

— This action was commenced in the circuit court of St. Clair county, Missouri, to recover ten thousand dollars for breach of covenants of seizin and warranty in a deed executed by the defendant Lucksinger,' a resident of St. Clair county, Missouri, to Charles C. Henry of Jackson county, Missouri, of date June 20, 1899, conveying certain lands described as surveys 13 and 25 in block 230, Foley county, in the State of Texas, and wherein the consideration w;as expressed to be “one dollar and other lands.” Subsequently Henry conveyed the same lands to the plaintiff by deed dated April 19, 1902, wherein the warranty was special only and the consideration “five dollars and exchange of property.” This action was begun September 17, 1904, in St. Clair county, Missouri, fox the breach of the said covenants of the defendant to Henry. The plaintiff alleging that she was damaged in the sum of ten thousand dollars, because the title to said lands had entirely failed, and the measure of her damages was the market value thereof, which she alleged to be ten thousand dollars.

The answer of the defendant was a general denial.

A jury was waived in the circuit court and the cause was submitted to the court upon the pleadings and the evidence and judgment was rendered for the plaintiff for the sum of one dollar. From that judgment she has appealed in due form.

The facts of the case are practically undisputed.

[7]*7As already stated, tlie defendant, on June 20, 1899, being tben and at the time of the commencement of this suit, a resident of St. Clair county, Missouri, executed and delivered to Charles 0. Henry, of Jackson county, Missouri, a deed with covenants of sei-zin and warranty to the said lands in Texas, and thereafter on the 19th of April 1902, Henry and wife by a deed of special warranty conveyed the same lands to plaintiff. Plaintiff introduced evidence tending’ to show that defendant had no title whatever to the land, which his said deed purported to convey to Henry, and it was admitted that neither Henry no,r the plaintiff was ever in the actual possession of said land. The evidence further tended to show the value of the Texas land as follows:

W. H. Eagin testified that if the land was dry land -it was worth one dollar per acre; if. it had living water on it, it was worth four or five dollars per acre, but the witness could not state of his own knowledge whether the land had living water on it or not.

Charles C. Henry testified that the defendant told him that there was a creek, which went through both sections, and there was a little timber along the creek, but it was mostly prairie; that it was pasture land, and the consideration was that it was worth five dollars per acre; that defendant placed a value of six thousand dollars upon the Texas land and the witness, Henry, placed the same value upon the property which he traded defendant for the said land, but he supposed that this was more than the property was worth. Witness never saw the land in Texas.

The plaintiff did not attempt to show the consideration she paid Henry for deeding said property to her. She did not show that she had paid the five dollars recited in the deed, nor that she had conveyed any other property to him as mentioned in the deed. The cause was tried upon her part on the theory that it was of no consequence what damages, if any, she [8]*8naturally sustained, but that ber measure of recovery should be the value of the lands described in defendant’s deed to Henry, without regard to the consideration passing from her to Henry.

There was no evidence as to the value of the property which Henry conveyed to the defendant in consideration of the conveyance to him of the property in Texas.

I. Logically the contention of the defendant that this action was local in its character and could neither be brought nor maintained in this State, because the covenants of warranty and seizin related to lands in Texas, presents the first question for decision on this record.

The proposition, in order to be of any value to the defendant in this case, must deny the jurisdiction of the circuit court of St. Clair county over the subject- . matter of this action, because if it were a mere question of jurisdiction over the person, the appearance of the defendant and his answer to the merits effectually waived any question of the jurisdiction over his person.

At common law no local action could be maintained out of the jurisdiction in which it arose, even though the result in many instances would be to deprive a party of all remedy, and where the action was brought by a remote grantee of the land on a covenant which ran with the land, the covenantee’s right of action was based upon privity of estate and not on privity of contract, and the action was deemed local and must have been brought in the place or county in which the land lies. [8 Am. & Eng. Ency. Law, p. 222; Birney v. Haim, 2 Litt. (Ky.) 262; White v. Sanborn, 6 N. H. 224; Lienow v. Ellis, 6 Mass. 331; Clark v. Scudder, 6 Gray (Mass.), 121.]

We concede that this is the settled common law rule, and the courts of the different states in our [9]*9Union, which have maintained this doctrine, have done so nnder stress of the common law, bnt, in onr opinion, our statute providing for the place of bringing of suits, sections 562 and 564, chapter 8, article 3, Revised Statutes 1899, has changed this rule and this action on a covenant of seizin or warranty is not one required to be brought in the county in which the land lies.

In Oliver v. Loye, 59 Miss. 320, this question arose and Judge Campbell, speaking for the Supreme Court of that State, while recognizing the common law rule as to local and transitory actions, said: “Originally, all actions were local, and great regard was had to place, so that every material allegation of pleading had to be accompanied by the averment of a place, in order that a jury might be summoned from the proper neighborhood, if issue should be taken on any of such allegations. The courts, in order to relieve against the difficulties which arose from the necessity of the proper venue in every action, took a distinction between matters which were local and those which were transitory, and invented a fiction whereby actions for causes of a transitory character, wherever they arose, might be maintained without regard to locality, ‘while no cognizance could be taken of local actions save when a jury of the county could be summoned to try them.’ A result was that for an injury to the person or chattels, and for a breach of any contract, even if it related to land, a remedy might be had in the courts of another state or country than that in which the injury was done or in which the land lay. In other words, if the action was transitory and not local, it was maintainable anywhere.

“The courts in England soon freed themselves from the fetters of locality, as to all causes of action of such nature that they might arise anywhere, and by means of falsehood, politely called fiction, and stated under a videlicet, which was an apology for not telling the truth, maintained actions on such causes of action [10]*10as arose out of the territorial jurisdiction of the courts of England.

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Bluebook (online)
123 S.W. 441, 224 Mo. 1, 1909 Mo. LEXIS 4, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/coleman-v-lucksinger-mo-1909.