Crawley v. Glaze

84 S.E. 671, 117 Va. 274, 1915 Va. LEXIS 34
CourtSupreme Court of Virginia
DecidedMarch 11, 1915
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 84 S.E. 671 (Crawley v. Glaze) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Virginia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Crawley v. Glaze, 84 S.E. 671, 117 Va. 274, 1915 Va. LEXIS 34 (Va. 1915).

Opinion

Kelly, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

Elvina E. Glaze and Humphrey Glaze, her husband, instituted this suit in the chancery court of the city of Richmond to cancel and annul two deeds, one thereof made by them to V. M. Sutton, and the other made by V. M. Sutton and her husband, J. M. Sutton, to K. T. Crawley. There was a decree in favor of the complainants, and K. T. Crawley brings this appeal.

The record, owing to the length of the pleadings and the mass of evidence taken in the cause, is very large, but all the questions of law and fact necessary to a correct determination of the controversy, as we see it, will sufficiently appear in the course of this opinion.

The action of the chancery court in overruling the demurrer to the bill is made the basis of the first assignment of error. The record does not disclose the grounds of demurrer relied upon at the hearing of the cause, but from [276]*276the petition for appeal, adopted as the appellant’s brief, it appears that two objections are now urged to the sufficiency of the bill.

The first objection is that the bill shows on its face “that the plaintiffs, at the time they executed the deed to V. M. Sutton, did so with the express intention and design of defrauding certain real estate agents out of commissions which were claimed by said agents,” and that, therefore, the bill fails to state a case for relief. In support of this contention we are referred to the case of Harris v. Harris, 23 Gratt. (64 Va.) 737, and other decisions of this court, ending with Nunnally v. Stokes, 116 Va. 472, 82 S. E. 79, in which this court, in suits to annul conveyances, has recognized and applied the familiar maxim, “Nemo allegans suam turpitudinem audiendus est.”

No rule is better settled in our law than the one here invoked, but it cannot be applied to the case in hand, as will clearly appear from the allegations of the bill considered in the light of the following statement by Judge Buchanan in Nunnally v. Stokes, supra: “While the bill charges that the appellant was mentally inferior to her grantee, Stokes, it is not alleged* nor is it pretended, that she did not have sufficient capacity to make a valid contract. It is well settled that where both parties are legally capable of making contracts, although one may be much superior in mental capacity to the other, that circumstance does not take the case out of the general rule, unless it appears that some advantage was taken or undue influence exerted to obtain the conveyance” (italics ours). See, also, Tatum v. Tatum, 101 Va. 77, 43 S. E. 184; Smith v. Elliott, 1 Pat. and H. 307.

As will conclusively appear ip connection with the second ground of demurrer, the complainants in this case substantially allege the existence of the very elements which were wanting to warrant relief in the Nunnally [277]*277case, namely, their lack of sufficient capacity to make a contract, and the exercise over them of an undue advantage and influence to obtain the conveyance. Moreover, the bill charges that the false and fraudulent representations of J. M. Sutton, as to the danger of suits to collect commissions, were part and parcel of the general plan and scheme of fraud by which Sutton himself procured the conveyance.

There is no merit in this objection to the bill, and we pass to a consideration of the second and only remaining ground of demurrer, which is, as stated in the petition for appeal, “that according to the allegations of the plaintiffs’ bill, the suit could not possibly have been maintained by the parties plaintiff for the reason that if the allegations therein set forth are true the plaintiff, Elvina E. Glaze, was manifestly incapable of maintaining a suit in her own proper person.”

It will be observed, as above stated, that the construction thus placed by appellant upon the charges in the bill completely answers the first ground of demurrer, and renders wholly inapplicable to this case the general rule laid down in Nunnally v. Stokes, supra, and other cases of that type.

-It is equally clear, we think, that the demurrer cannot be sustained upon this second ground. The record does not disclose, and counsel for the contending parties are not agreed, whether this defense was made in the lower court. If the question was not raised there, it is of too technical a nature to receive serious consideration when raised for the first time on appeal. Bird’s Committee v. Bird, 21 Gratt. (62 Va.) 715; Cole’s Committee v. Cole, 28 Gratt. (69 Va.) 365. See, also, Richmond Ry. & Elec. Co. v. Bowles, 92 Va. 738, 24 S. E. 388; Jackson v. Counts, 106 Va. 7, 54 S. E. 870.

The demurrer, whatever may have been the grounds urged in the lower court, appears not to have been argued until after the taking of the evidence was completed. We [278]*278cannot say whether the objection for want of proper parties was or was not raised at all, but there is a presumption in favor of the correctness of the decree appealed from, and the burden-is on the appellant to satisfy us that the decree contains reversible error. Smith v. Alderson, 116 Va. 986, 83 S. E. 373; Johnson v. Michaux, 110 Va. 595, 66 S. E. 823. This rule of decision would seem to apply with peculiar force to a question involving, as does the one now being considered, the merest matter of form— the intervention of a nominal party as a next friend (there being no committee), who would have been merely “a shadow,” as expressed by the president of this court in Richmond, Ry. &c. Co. v. Bowles, supra, and whose nominal presence or absence it is now manifest could not possibly have helped or hurt the rights of any party at any stage of this cause.

Without deciding whether there would have been any merit in the point if it had been raised at the late stage in the proceedings at which the demurrer was argued, we have no hesitancy in holding that if the appellant intended to rely upon this objection to the bill as a ground of reversal in this court, he should have made the objection in the lower court in such a manner as that it would .specifically and affirmatively appear in the record.

Coming now to a consideration of the remaining assignments of error, which challenge the correctness of the decree complained of in its findings against the appellant on the real merits of the case, we cannot, within the reasonable limits of any written opinion, attempt a complete and detailed discussion of the charges and counter-charges of the parties and the evidence respectively introduced in support thereof, set out in a record containing over seven hundred printed pages, but must, in the main, be content to state merely our conclusions, arrived at after a patient and careful consideration of the entire record. A discus[279]*279sion, even thus limited, will of necessity he rather a lengthy one.

As we see this controversy, a correct solution of it depends upon the view to be taken of the deed dated September 28, 1909, from E. E. Glaze and Humphrey Glaze to V. M. Sutton, for, as we shall see, Crawley occupies no higher position, from a legal and equitable standpoint, than Sutton acquired by this deed.

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Bluebook (online)
84 S.E. 671, 117 Va. 274, 1915 Va. LEXIS 34, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/crawley-v-glaze-va-1915.