Texas Pacific Coal & Oil Co. v. Mulvihill

27 So. 2d 719, 200 Miss. 497, 1946 Miss. LEXIS 315
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 28, 1946
DocketNo. 36178.
StatusPublished

This text of 27 So. 2d 719 (Texas Pacific Coal & Oil Co. v. Mulvihill) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Texas Pacific Coal & Oil Co. v. Mulvihill, 27 So. 2d 719, 200 Miss. 497, 1946 Miss. LEXIS 315 (Mich. 1946).

Opinion

L. A. Smith, Sr., J.,

delivered the opinion of the Court.

The appellee filed an original bill of complaint in the Chancery Court of Adams County as the widow and sole heir of P. W. Mulvihill, Jr., who died on June 21,. 1940. Appellee complained that a trustee’s sale and the trustee’s deed were both void, and that appellee, as the widow and sole heir of P. W. Mulvihill, Jr., deceased, was the owner of Allendale Plantation, so that the claims of the appellants thereto were clouds upon her title, which she *503 asked to be cancelled, and also prayed that her title be confirmed. She also, in ber original bill, said she tendered the full amount of principal and interest that the court might find to be due from her, if any, upon an accounting between her and the appellants. Her successful prosecution of this suit depends upon her ability to avoid the trustee’s sale and deed.

The decedent purchased certain lands in Adams County March 18, 1918, which, under date of April 17, 1920, he conveyed in a deed of trust to W. Howard Pritchart, as trustee, consisting of two plantations, The Allendale Plantation and Clifford Plantation. The indebtedness secured by the trust deed was evidenced by five notes of $2,000 each, payable annually, to the peoples Savings Bank of Natchez, which bank assigned a two-fifths interest in said indebtedness to the Bank of Commerce of Natchez. Thereafter, P. W. Mulvihill, Jr., became non compos mentis, and so continued until he died. On April 18,1924, default having been made in the payment of certain of the notes' above described, the trustee advertised the sale of said land by foreclosure. At the sale, the Bank of Commerce and the Peoples Savings Bank jointly purchased both plantations in the proportions of two-fifths by the Bank of Commerce and three-fifths by the Peoples Savings Bank, and on May 10, 1924, the trustee executed his deed as such to them accordingly.

The appellants, who are the defendants in the original bill of complaint, were made such thereto because of their alleged ownership or claim of interest in said tract described as the Allendale Plantation, or the oil, gas and other minerals therein or thereunder, having acquired the same subsequently to the said foreclosure sale all because of transactions traced to the trustee’s sale to the two bank and their vendees and alienees.

Appellee attacked the validity of the foreclosure and trustee’s deed on five grounds, to-wit:

(a) That the cestuis que trustent “did not pass any resolution or take any other legal action declaring default *504 in the payment of said indebtedness, or authorizing the foreclosure of said deed of trust by said trustee, and the actions of the trustee were, therefore, null and void, and were a fraud upon the rights of the complainant herein, and her husband P. W. Mulvihill, Jr., who, at the time of said attempted foreclosure, was wholly mentally incompetent. ’ ’

(b) “There is no provision in said deed of trust by which the owner and holder of the indebtedness thereby secured might become a purchaser under any sale ’ ’ by the trustee, and that the action of the trustee was a sale as an entirety to the owners of the indebtedness secured by the trust deed, two-fifths to the Bank of Commerce and three-fifths to the Peoples Savings Bank.

(c) “The deed of trust describes several separate parcels of land which are not contiguous, but are many miles apart, and by the Trustee’s deed it appears contrary to the requirements of Section 888, Mississippi Code of 1942, which was in effect at the time of said purported and attempted sale in this that said tracts were offered first as one tract known as ‘ Clifford Plantation, ’ then as another tract known as ‘Allendale Plantation,’ and there was bid for the first tract $5,500, and for the second tract $6,000, or a total of $11,500. Then when said two separate tracts and parcels were then offered both together, the two banks, as the owners of the indebtedness both together bid for both plantations the exact total of the separate bids, and the trustee attempted to make the sale of the plantations together as an entirety, when as a matter of law, the sale of the property as an entirety as described in a deed of trust can be made only where the price bid for the said several separate tracts and parcels shall exceed the aggregate of the bid made for the separate tracts.”

(d) “That as to the Allendale Plantation and the property hereinabove described, it should have been sold according to the provisions of Section 111, Mississippi Constitution of 1890, which requred that it should be offered in subdivisions not exceeding 160 acres, or quarter sec *505 tion, and then offered as an entirety, and that the price bid for the latter shall control only when the price for the entirety shall exceed the aggregate for the said land as offered in subdivisions, as required by said section of the Constitution, and also as required by Section 888, Mississippi Code of 1942, because the deed of trust in none of its provisions waived any of the constitutional or statutory requirements as to mode of sale nor does the deed of trust at any place authorize the sale of the several tracts of land therein described as an entirety, contrary to the requirements of said constitutional and statutory provisions.”

(e) “That said deed of trust, Exhibit One hereto, among other things, provides that P. W. Mulvihill, Jr., as Party of the First Part, ‘ expressly reserves the right to have released from this deed of trust either said Clifford or Allendale Plantation at any time he may sell either of said plantations, upon the payment by him of $5,000 upon the principal of his said notes and the interest accrued on said notes to the date of payment, et cetera, ’ and that the amount received at said trustee’s sale was largely in excess of said $5,000' and the accrued interest, and therefore, was tantamount to payment of the said $5,000 and accrued interest, and thereby there was released to the said P. W. Mulvihill, Jr., his successors and heirs, all of said Allendale Plantation, and the attempted transfer by said trustee thereasto was therefore null and void. ’ ’

The prayer of the bill was that her title to the Allendale Plantation be confirmed and quieted, and that all of the instruments and conveyances set forth in the original bill executed or recorded since March 18,1918, be cancelled as casting clouds and suspicion upon her title to the Allen-dale Plantation, and that T. F. Hodge and the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company be enjoined from trespassing thereupon, drilling or attempting to drill any oil, gas or mineral wells thereupon.

It will thus be seen that the prayer of the original bill seeks relief only as to the Allendale Plantation and seeks *506 no relief as to the Clifford Plantation. In this Court appellee changes her position and now says in her brief that she “attempts to show that the foreclosure sale of those tracts of land described in the deed of trust as Allendale Plantation are null and void for the following reasons:.

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Bluebook (online)
27 So. 2d 719, 200 Miss. 497, 1946 Miss. LEXIS 315, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/texas-pacific-coal-oil-co-v-mulvihill-miss-1946.