Dee v. Collins

22 N.W.2d 333, 237 Iowa 429, 1946 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 301
CourtSupreme Court of Iowa
DecidedApril 2, 1946
DocketNo. 46829.
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 22 N.W.2d 333 (Dee v. Collins) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Iowa primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Dee v. Collins, 22 N.W.2d 333, 237 Iowa 429, 1946 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 301 (iowa 1946).

Opinion

Bliss, C. J.

I. This is the second appeal to this court in the case. The opinion in the first appeal is in 235 Iowa 22, 15 N. W. 2d 883. On the first trial there was a decree for plaintiff. The defendants, at the close of plaintiff’s case, had moved to dismiss the petition. The motion was denied. When defendants began to offer their testimony plaintiff objected on the ground that in moving to dismiss defendants had rested their case and were precluded from offering their defense. The trial was re *430 cessed for a few days until counsel could submit authorities. When the trial was resumed defendants asked that the case be reopened to permit the introduction of their testimony. The court refused upon the ground that both sides had previously rested. On that appeal we held that the district court did not-err in denying* defendants’ motion to dismiss, as plaintiff had made a prima facie case entitling him to specific performance, with the exception that interest should have been added to the tender of the purchase price, but reversed because of the court’s refusal to permit the defendants to offer their evidence. The case was therefore remanded to permit the offer of such evidence and any rebuttal by plaintiff.

The defenses which defendants sought to prove on the second trial were, first, abandonment of the contract by plaintiff, and, second, that plaintiff was not in court with clean hands- in that he had attempted to prevent defendants from perfecting their title to the property and was seeking to acquire title for himself other than by enforcing his contract.

Judge W. L. Eichendorf, who had presided at the first trial, died sometime thereafter. The second trial was heard by Judge Martin M. Cooney but it was agreed that he might consider the testimony received in the first trial.

In the preparation of the record for this appeal the defendants offered twenty amendments to the record submitted by plaintiff. The trial court rejected six of the suggested amendments but permitted the others. Instead of the testimony being properly abstracted, by far the- greater part of it- is needlessly set out verbatim as it appears in the transcript and contains much repetition and immaterial matter of no aid to the court or to the litigants.

In October 1940 one Gaul held the record title to Lot 5 in Lot 2 in Section 30, Township 98, Range 5, in the city of Waukon, Iowa. It was a rectangular piece of ground, approximately 561 feet long north and south and approximately 107.7 feet wide east and west. The south end of the tract abutted on the north side of Bradley Street and its west side abutted on the east side of Williams Street. The tract was apparently not cross-fenced or subdivided on the ground but the south 183 feet *431 of it, abutting on Bradley Street, wbieb was paved, bad a residence on it.. One Neubauer and wife were living on this part of the tract, under a lease or contract to purchase, in October 1940. On the middle 122 feet of the tract was a bungalow, which plaintiff and family were occupying under a lease at a rental of $17 a month. The north 256 feet of the tract was a vacant lot. The lengths of the three parts as given are but approximations.

The Collins family, consisting of the father and mother, two daughters, Mary and Catherine, and two 'sons, Robert and Tom, were in the real-estate business as agents or realtors. They had the Gaul tract for sale and for rent. They had leased the middle tract to the plaintiff and he had paid them $50 as rent. The brother and sister, Robert and Mary Collins,' are the defendants.

Gaul was involved financially. He and his wife had borrowed $2,200 in 1938 of the Waukon State Bank and secured the debt with a mortgage on all of said Lot 5. Wingen & Sons had a judgment against Gaul which was a lien on Lot 5, and it was sold on execution sale on October 12, 1940, to Chris Wingen for $338.60.

Carl Schultz procured a judgment against Gaul and wife on March 22, 1940, for $139.81 and costs, and on November 14, 1941, Lot 5 was sold at execution sale to Schultz. The Waukon State Bank procured decree of foreclosure of its mortgage on February 3, 1942, and Lot 5 was bid in by the bank at special execution sale on March 18, 1942, for $2,232.52. This was less than the judgment and a receiver was appointed.

Gordon Van Tine Company had a judgment lien against the lot for $250. Tax-sale certificates totaling $352 were outstanding against Lot 5, and also taxes of $103 for a single year were unpaid.

There was also a mortgage for $1,000 on Lot 5 held by Frances Smith, a sister of Mrs. Gaul. This mortgage was apparently fictitious. The defendant Mary B. Collins said she talked to Frances Smith and Mrs. Grossman, her mother, and they told her there was no consideration for the mortgage and Mrs. Smith had given Gaul a release of it. Arthur Sheridan *432 also held a mortgage of $500 on Lot 5, which Mary E. Collins also testified tha.t Sheridan told her had ■ been released.

There were liens against Lot 5 in the late fall of 1940 in excess of $3,500. The Gauls had left the state and Mrs. Ida Collins, the mother, testified that since they had been to some expense and work in trying to sell the place, and the Gauls had listed it for sale to others, they made Gauls an offer of $300 for Lot 5. She then proposed to Dee, the plaintiff, that he buy the middle portion, which he was occupying, for $1,800. Dee testified that Mrs. Collins told him to have a down payment of $300 ready so that she could take up the Gaul deed when it came. Gaul sent a deed in blank to Lot 5 to the Kerndt bank, with an assignment of the Smith mortgage, also in blank, and a release of the Sheridan mortgage. On November 25, 1940, Dee paid Mrs. Ida Collins $300 and received the following receipt :

“Waukon, la. Nov. 25th, 1940

Received a Cert, of Deposit for $100.00 and also a check for $200.00 to turn over to Kerndt Bros. Bank on payment on new house on Gaul property, the lot of 120 feet facing on "Williams St.

[Signed] Ida R. Collins.”

The Collins family received the Gaul deed on December 8, 1940, and inserted therein the name of the defendant Robert A. Collins, as grantee1, although his mother testified that his financial responsibility was quite limited. Mrs. Collins testified that the Smith assignment and the Sheridan release were not delivered to them.

Thereafter Mrs. Collins and Cletus E. Dee, the plaintiff, went to the office of F. E. Teeling, his attorney, who prepared a written contract between Robert A. Collins as seller and Dee as purchaser of the middle 122 feet of said Lot 5, together with an easement for driveway purposes on the east 12 feet of the south 183 feet of Lot 5 to Bradley Street. The consideration was $1,800, payable $350 in cash (the $50 paid as rent and the $300 paid on November 25, 1940), and the balance of $1,450 by a note for $1,000, due in five years, with interest at five per *433 cent, secured by a first mortgage on tbe land purchased, and a note for $450, payable in three years, with interest at four per cent, secured by a second mortgage on the land, with the privilege of making payments of $10 or any multiple thereof on the first day of any month before the notes became due.

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Bluebook (online)
22 N.W.2d 333, 237 Iowa 429, 1946 Iowa Sup. LEXIS 301, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/dee-v-collins-iowa-1946.