Williams v. Neal

271 P. 455, 83 Mont. 244, 1928 Mont. LEXIS 19
CourtMontana Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 25, 1928
DocketNo. 6,387.
StatusPublished

This text of 271 P. 455 (Williams v. Neal) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Montana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Williams v. Neal, 271 P. 455, 83 Mont. 244, 1928 Mont. LEXIS 19 (Mo. 1928).

Opinion

MR. JUSTICE MATTHEWS

delivered the opinion of the court.

In March, 1928, George T. Williams commenced an action against E. L. Neal and Josephine Neal, husband and wife, for the cancellation of a certain lease on a stall in a garage situated on the rear of his residence property in Miles City, on the ground of alleged fraud and misrepresentation in obtaining the lease and the failure of the consideration therefor. At the same time he secured the issuance of an order to show cause why a temporary restraining order should not be issued. A hearing was duly had on the order to show cause, and, at the close thereof, the court issued an “injunction order” restraining defendants from trespassing upon any portion of plaintiff’s property not included in a driveway mentioned. The order permits the continued use of the stall, provided it can be used without trespass. From this order the defendants have appealed.

By specifications, not numbered as required by the rules of this court, defendants assert that the court erred in making the order; that there is no evidence to sustain it; and that the order is void in that it permits the defendants to use the stall “but prevents them from getting to the garage.”

The record made on the hearing discloses the following facts: Defendants originally owned all of lots 1, 2, 3 *247 and 4 in a certain city block, title being of record in the name of Josephine Neal. These lots were 25 feet wide each; they fronted on Jordan Street and extended east 123 feet to an alley; lot 1 is bounded on the north by Bridge Street; improvements thereon consist of a dwelling-house on the west 88 feet facing Jordan Street, with an artesian well at the rear end, and, on the east 35 feet, a dwelling-house facing Bridge ■Street, and a two-ear garage standing on the southeast corner of lot 4, with doors opening to the north.

On August 18, 1927, E. L. Neal, acting for his wife, negotiated a sale of the east 35 feet of the lots, with the improvements thereon, to Williams at the agreed price of $3,000. Mrs. Neal was willing to sell, provided she could reserve the use of a stall in the garage mentioned. On August 19, Neal, in company with Williams and Mrs. Williams, went to the office of his attorney, P. F. Leonard, and there, for the first time, mentioned the reservation of the stall in the garage, and it was agreed that the matter would be arranged by the exchange of the use of one-half of the garage for the use of water from the artesian well, the method of effecting a transfer being left to Leonard. Leonard drew a deed conveying the property sold, but reserving to the grantor an easement over ■the west 5 feet of the east 35 feet of lots 1, 2 and 3, and granting to the second party an easement over the adjoining 5-foot strip, thus providing for a joint driveway from Bridge Street to the north line of lot 4. Leonard then prepared .two leases, each reciting a consideration of $1 and each to run for a term of 25 years. One lease granted to Williams the use, in common with Mrs. Neal, of the waters of the artesian well; the other, as it appears as an exhibit, granted to Mrs. Neal the use of the west half or stall “of the garage to be placed and located on the northwest corner of the east 35 feet of lot numbered 4,” and recited that “a mutual driveway or easement has been agreed upon leading to the said garage.”

This disposition of the property was satisfactory to both Williams and Neal, but the former stated that he would not *248 be able to move tbe garage until spring, and the latter consented to the delay, stating that he had an old Ford and did not then “care about the garage,” and that “if he wanted to use the garage he would use it by way of the alley.” Mrs. Neal was then called in, and the three instruments were executed and delivered. The Neal family continued, however, to use the stall in the garage by driving across plaintiff’s back yard either from the mutual driveway established or from the alley, and this was done without protest by plaintiff until the month of November, and although plaintiff testified that he did order defendants in November to cease using the garage, and in March, 1928, served written notice to that effect on them, they evidently continued to so use the garage up to the time the order herein was issued.

Plaintiff testified that in November he measured the garage and found that it was 18 feet square, instead of 16 feet square, as B. L. Neal had said, and that the space between the southwest corner of the house and the west line of his lot was but 13 feet wide, instead of 15 feet wide, as represented by Neal, and it was, consequently, impossible to move the garage to the agreed location, his contention being that the agreement was that the garage be placed on the northwest corner of lot 3 and that the lease had been erroneously drawn or thereafter changed to read “lot numbered 4.”

His contention is further that at the time the agreement was reached the parties did not know whether his house expended only to the south line of lot 2 or across that line on to lot 3, and that the original agreement as to the driveway was that it was to extend only across lots 1 and 2, but because of the above uncertainty, the driveway was extended to include lot 3 in order to avoid the danger of leaving a space between the end of the drive and the doors of the garage When moved.

Plaintiff further testified, as did his wife, that Neal represented that a pipe projecting into the cellar of the house-purchased was connected with the artesian well and that *249 the water thereof could be used merely by placing a pump on the pipe, but that when he purchased a pump and installed it they got no water, and then discovered that there was no connection between the pipe and the well. Plaintiff alleged and stated that all of the representations referred to were false and known to be so by Neal; that he had confidence in Neal, believed and relied upon the representations made by him, and would not have made the exchange embodied in the two leases had he known the facts.

The evidence tended to show that the manner in which members of the Neal family drove their car across plaintiff’s lot endangered the lives and limbs of plaintiff’s small children while at play thereon, and that the ear tore up the sod and rutted the surface of the lot.

1. Much of the testimony adduced was directed toward the issues to be determined in the trial of the main action, and much thereof was disputed by defendants. We do not presume to intimate how those issues shall finally be determined, but it must be remembered that the order from which the appeal is taken is but a temporary injunction, effective only until the final determination of the main action. On the hearing had it was not within the province of the trial court, and it is not within the province of this court now, to determine finally any of the matters which may arise upon the trial of the merits of the case (Blinn v. Hutterische Society, 58 Mont. 542, 194 Pac.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
271 P. 455, 83 Mont. 244, 1928 Mont. LEXIS 19, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/williams-v-neal-mont-1928.