Wood v. Lathrop

459 S.W.2d 808, 249 Ark. 376, 1970 Ark. LEXIS 1112
CourtSupreme Court of Arkansas
DecidedNovember 9, 1970
Docket5-5359
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 459 S.W.2d 808 (Wood v. Lathrop) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Arkansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wood v. Lathrop, 459 S.W.2d 808, 249 Ark. 376, 1970 Ark. LEXIS 1112 (Ark. 1970).

Opinion

George Rose Smith, Justice.

Edwin Hawley, the appellant’s stepfather, was married at least twice. After the death of his wife Beatrice (the appellant’s mother), Haw-ley agreed to make a will leaving to the appellant an undivided half interest in a certain lot in Springdale. Later on, however, Hawley and his wife Harriet, whom he had married after the date of his agreement with the appellant, conveyed the lot to Thomas H. and Dorothy E. Lathrop, appellees. The Lathrops brought this suit against the appellant, Mrs. Wood, to quiet their title to the property. This appeal is from a summary judgment in favor of the Lathrops. The ultimate question is whether it is an undisputed fact, as the chancellor found, that the Lathrops took the title free of any claim on the part of Mrs. Wood.

The facts, as developed in the motions for summary judgment, are of controlling importance. Edwin and Beatrice Hawley owned the lot as tenants by the entirety at Beatrice’s death on March 19, 1963. Mrs. Wood asserted a claim to the lot and to other property, by virtue of an antenuptial agreement between Edwin and Beatrice Hawley. The matter was settled by Haw-ley’s agreement that he would execute a will leaving an undivided half interest in the lot to Mrs. Wood.

Thereafter Edwin Hawley married Harriet Hawley, now an appellee. On March 14, 1964, Edwin and Harriet Hawley created a tenancy by the entirety in the lot by conveying it to Doris Hilburn, who reconveyed it to them on the same day. Those deeds were recorded on March 16, 1964.

In August, 1965, Mrs. Wood brought a suit in the Washington chancery court, No. 17215, against Edwin Hawley, asserting certain property rights. That suit terminated on February 8, 1966, with the entry of a consent decree which directed Edwin Hawley to execute a will leaving the agreed half interest to Mrs. Wood. On the day after the entry of the consent decree a lis pendens notice was filed by Mrs. Wood. On the following day, February 10, Edwin Hawley executed a will in compliance with the decree. That will was filed for record in the county recorder’s office on February 24, 1966.

By a deed dated July 3, 1967, and recorded November 22, 1967, Edwin and Harriet Hawley conveyed the lot to the Lathrops. On December 1, 1967, the Lathrops filed this suit against Mrs. Wood, asking that the consent decree and the lis pendens notice be canceled as clouds on the Lathrops’ title and that the title to the lot be quieted in them. By cross-complaint Mrs. Wood brought Edwin and Harriet Hawley into the case. Mrs. Wood asked that the Lathrops be declared trustees of a constructive trust to the extent of Mrs. Wood’s half interest in the lot, and, alternatively, that Mrs. Wood have a money judgment against Edwin Hawley for $7,500 as the fair market value of the half interest in the lot. Edwin Hawley died on August 20, 1968, while the suit was pending. Harriet Hawley, as his administratrix, was substituted for him as a cross defendant.

Both Mrs. Wood and the Lathrops filed motions for summary judgment, setting forth the facts substantially as we have outlined them. We may say at this point that we do not agree with the appellees’ contention that a party who files a motion for summary judgment after his adversary has filed such a motion thereby concedes that no material issue of fact exists in the case. That argument is opposed both to reason and to authority. When such cross motions are filed each movant is contending for the purpose of his own motion that there is no material issue of fact in the case, but there is no reason at all to say as an inflexible rule that he also admits the nonexistence of any factual issue with respect to his adversary’s motion. Our summary judgment statute was copied from Rule 56 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, with respect to which this statement is made in Barron and Holtzoff’s Federal Practice & Procedure, § 1239 (Wright’s Ed., 1958):

The fact that both parties have moved for summary judgment does not establish that there is no issue of fact. A party may concede that there is no issue if his legal theory is accepted and yet maintain that there is a genuine dispute as to material facts if his opponent’s theory is adopted. Thus, both motions should be denied if the court finds that there is actually a genuine issue as to a material fact.

The chancellor, in granting the Lathrops’ motion for summary judgment, stated his reasoning in a memorandum that is paralleled here by the arguments in the appellees’ brief. That reasoning accepts the premise that the contract between Edwin Hawley and Mrs. Wood, being valid, would be binding upon Hawley’s successors in title unless they were transferees for value and without notice. That is unquestionably a correct statement of the law. See Naylor v. Shelton, 102 Ark. 30, 143 S. W. 117, Ann. Cas. 1914A, 394, with annotation (1912); Page on Wills, § 10.23 (Bowe-Parker Ed., 1960).

The question, then, is whether the Lathrops are entitled to the protection accorded to bona fide purchasers. It was asserted by Mrs. Wood in her unverified counterclaim, and has not yet been denied, that the Lathrops had both actual and constructive notice of Mrs.. Wood’s contractual rights when the Lathrops acquired the lot from the Hawleys. In view of the assertion that the Lathrops had actual notice we need not explore the validity of constructive notice stemming from the consent decree, or from the lis pendens notice filed a day after the entry of that decree, or from the recordation of Hawley’s will in the circuit clerk’s deed records. Such sources of constructive notice would of course be immaterial if the Lathrops had actual notice of Mrs. Wood’s claim.

The chancellor, in his memorandum, laid aside the whole matter of the Lathrops’ actual or constructive notice; for he concluded that their position as successors in title to Harriet Hawley was unassailable. We quote from his memorandum:

There is nothing in the record now before the court even faintly suggesting that Harriet was not an innocent and unknowing participant in this whole affair. It is true that, according to [Mrs. Wood’s] affidavit in support of her motion for summary judgment, her agreement with Edwin Hawley to be a devisee in his will was made after her mother, Beatrice Hawley, died, and before Edwin married Harriet, and thus, necessarily, before Harriet became a tenant by the entirety by the deed from Doris Hilburn to her and Edwin.
But, there is no record of this agreement in any form which would convey notice to anyone, and especially to Harriet, before she became owner as tenant by the entirety, nor is it alleged that she had any notice. As far as this record is concerned, the first time Harriet could have had notice was at the time of filing of suit by defendant (as plaintiff) against Edwin Hawley, in cause No. 17215, in which the existence of the agreement was alleged, found to be a fact, and Edwin Hawley ordered to fulfill it. But at this time, Harriet’s rights as a tenant by the entirety had become fixed.
In the absence of knowledge by Harriet of the agreement between Edwin and Mrs. Wood, and not being a party to case No.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Kraft v. Limestone Partners, LLC
2017 Ark. App. 315 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2017)
Smith v. Pavan
2016 Ark. 437 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 2016)
Ryder v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance
268 S.W.3d 298 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 2007)
Corn Insurance Agency, Inc. v. First Federal Bank of Arkansas, F.A.
194 S.W.3d 230 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2004)
Cranfill v. Union Planters Bank, N.A.
158 S.W.3d 703 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 2004)
Chick-A-Dilly Properties, Inc. v. Hilyard
856 S.W.2d 15 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 1993)
Moss v. Allstate Insurance
776 S.W.2d 831 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 1989)
Heritage Bay Property Regime v. Jenkins
766 S.W.2d 624 (Court of Appeals of Arkansas, 1989)
Dickson v. Renfro
634 S.W.2d 104 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 1982)
Hood v. Welch
463 S.W.2d 362 (Supreme Court of Arkansas, 1971)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
459 S.W.2d 808, 249 Ark. 376, 1970 Ark. LEXIS 1112, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wood-v-lathrop-ark-1970.