Waters v. Wells

117 S.E. 322, 155 Ga. 439, 1923 Ga. LEXIS 90
CourtSupreme Court of Georgia
DecidedApril 12, 1923
DocketNo. 3371
StatusPublished
Cited by32 cases

This text of 117 S.E. 322 (Waters v. Wells) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Waters v. Wells, 117 S.E. 322, 155 Ga. 439, 1923 Ga. LEXIS 90 (Ga. 1923).

Opinions

Hill, J.

(After stating the foregoing facts.)

Error is assigned in the first special ground of the motion for new trial because of the alleged failure of the court to charge the jury certain contentions of the plaintiff. There was no request in writing to charge the contentions set up in this ground. The first contention which it is insisted the court should have charged the jury was that the plaintiff was a bona fide purchaser of the land in controversy for a valuable consideration. It will be seen from the foregoing statement of facts that the consideration expressed in the plaintiff’s deed, upon which he relied for a rer covery, was natural love and affection and the sum of $5. The evidence discloses the fact that he never paid the $5, and, while testifying in his own behalf, he stated that he did not pay anything for the land in controversy and did not know of the existence of the deed to him for a'long number of years after it was made, he being a boy of thirteen years at the time of its execution.

The second contention which it is insisted was omitted from the charge was that a part of the consideration moving from the plaintiff’s father inducing him to make the deed was several months services given by the plaintiff to his father after he had become twenty-one years of age. According to the evidence .as disclosed by the record, these services, if performed, were eight or nine years after the deed was executed; and therefore the court properly failed to state this contention of the plaintiff, if such was the contention at the time of the trial, as the services rendered long after the execution of the deed could not be the basis of a valuable consideration unless there was a contract to that effect, and there is no evidence showing that such was the fact; and as to this contention we are of the opinion that even if there had been a request in writing to charge this contention, the court would have been authorized to so charge. It is true that the plaintiff gave evidence that his father received his services up to the time he was twenty-one years of age, and received them six months after he was twenty-one; but for the time that he was under twenty-one the father would be entitled to his services, and, as stated above, there is no evidence of a contract between the father and the son that after he became twenty-one years of age his services should go as a part of the consideration for the making of the deed.

[444]*444The third contention of the plaintiff which it is insisted that the court should have stated to the jury was that the plaintiff had gone into the possession of the property and made valuable improvements thereon in good faith and upon the strength of the deed from George W. Waters, his father, to him. As to this ground it is sufficient to say that there is no evidence in the case that the plaintiff ever went into possession of the land in controversy. The land in controversy, it appears from the record, is the “home place” sued for; but there is no evidence that the plaintiff was ever in possession of it, or that he made valuable improvements on that place at all. It is true he was in possession of about 400 acres of land outside of the 102 acres in controversy, but there is evidence to the effect that plaintiff never got possession of the deed to any of the land at all until after his father’s death, and that he never had possession of more than a one-horse farm before his father’s death, and that farm was not a part of the land in controversy.

It is also contended that the court erred in failing to charge the jury that plaintiff contended that the defendant was not a purchaser for value or without notice, that she paid nothing, for the property either in money or services, and that she well knew, before taking the deed under which she claims, that the maker of her deed had already given plaintiff a deed covering the property he sought to convey to her. We are of the opinion that this assignment is without merit. By reference to the charge of the court, which is in the record, it will appear that this contention was covered in his instructions to the jury.

The second special ground of the motion for new trial assigns error on the ruling of the court which permitted the defendant to testify: “ I claim possession of this land in question under a certain deed, and I have had possession of that deed twelve or fifteen years. During that interval of time the deed has been in my possession. I kept it in my room. No one, except me and my husband, had possession of this deed or control of it. Before my father died, a part of the time my husband had this deed in his safe. I also had in my possession this plat, and they both were in my possession all the time.” Error is assigned on the ground that the defendant was incompetent to testify, because her father, under whom she claimed, was dead, and the plaintiff, her brother, [445]*445was claiming likewise under a deed from the same grantor; and the court by consent of counsel having ruled that neither the plaintiff nor the defendant could testify to any transaction had with their father, deceased, counsel for plaintiff contended that to allow the defendant to testify that she had the deed and plat in her possession was equivalent to permitting her to testify that her father in his lifetime had delivered her the deed and plat, under which she claimed. We are of the opinion that the court did not err in allowing the defendant to testify as above set forth. Under the Civil Code (1910), § 5858, the incompetency of a witness to testify in a case like the present extends only to transactions or communications with the deceased. Nugent v. Watkins, 129 Ga. 382 (58 S. E. 888); Hall v. Hilley, 139 Ga. 13 (76 S. E. 566). This court has held that independent physical facts not involving communications or transactions with deceased persons are not within the rule which would exclude one from testifying where the other party to the transactions or communications is deceased. Bank of S. W. Ga. v. McGarrah, 120 Ga. 944 (6) (48 S. E. 393); Nugent v. Watkins, supra; Holbrooks v. Holbrooks, ante, 363 (116 S. E. 786); Watkins v. Stulb, 23 Ga. App. 183 (8) (98 S. E. 94).

The evidence was objected to as a whole; and even if any portion of it was objectionable and the other was not, the exception to the admissibility of the evidence as a whole is without merit. Blackstock v. Blackman, 152 Ga. 179 (4) (108 S. E. 775); Moore v. Butler, 150 Ga. 154 (2) (103 S. E. 154). And see, in this connection, DeNieff v. Howell, 138 Ga. 249 (4), 251 (75 S. E. 202); Gallagher v. Keiley, 115 Ga. 420 (2) (41 S. E. 613); Horton v. Smith, 115 Ga. 69 (3) (41 S. E. 253).

Error is assigned because the court during the trial erred in permitting the defendant to testify, in answer to a question, as follows: “ Q. On October 28, 1902, the date the deed was made to you by your father, had you ever heard that a deed had .been made to Alonzo Waters to this land, this home place? A. No sir, I did not have any knowledge or suspicion that such a deed had been made to it at that time.” The objection to this evidence is that the defendant is a party to the case, and she is incompetent to testify to a transaction she had with her father, as she- and her brother both claim under deeds from him. Even if the [446]

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Bluebook (online)
117 S.E. 322, 155 Ga. 439, 1923 Ga. LEXIS 90, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/waters-v-wells-ga-1923.