Jeffers v. Hulen
Jeffers v. Hulen
Opinion of the Court
Plaintiff as administrator of the estate of W. C. Jeffers, deceased, brought this action against the defendant to quiet title to ten acres of land in the possession of the defendant. The complaint is in the usual form and the answer, in addition to the customary denials, alleges that the defendant is, and for more than ten years prior to the commencement of the action has been, the owner and in possession of the land. W. C. Jeffers on the tenth day of September, 1908, executed an instrument in the form of an ordinary grant, bargain, and sale deed, caused it to be recorded, and on the next day delivered it to defendant. On the same day she gave him $250 in the form of a check. At other times thereafter she gave him sums of money aggregating more than $100. The plaintiff claims and attempted to prove that the instrument, in form a deed, was intended as a mortgage to secure payment of the $250 advanced by the defendant. The defendant contends that such instrument was intended as a deed of gift. The plaintiff replies that, if intended as a gift, it was an attempt to make a testamentary disposition by deed contrary to law.
W. C. Jeffers was a brother of the plaintiff and the defendant. He retained control of the land in controversy after the transaction related until December, 1910, when he left for Mexico, where he died in 1911.
The defendant testified that when W. C. Jeffers handed the deed to her he said, “Here is your deed,” or something to that effect; that he said, “I don’t want you to take a mortgage because I am going here and there and getting into trouble and want you to have this property if anything happens to me”; that he told her, “If I am riding on a freight train and get killed I want you to have my property”; “he told me he deeded the property to me in ease anything happened he wanted me to- have it.” Another witness for the defendant testified that W. C. Jeffers said, “I made this deed over to Nettie so if anything goes wrong I want her to have it.” The defendant further testified that “one time he asked sister and I why we didn’t go up and paper my house, . . . then one time he asked me if I paid my taxes with reference to this place.”
In 1912 the defendant’s brother, Ben Jeffers, wrote her that he desired to rent the land in controversy for a period of five years, and in her reply she said, “as to five years that suits me too unless Cay [W. C. Jeffers] returns to claim it.”
From the foregoing resume it is quite clear that the court’s finding that the instrument was intended as a mortgage finds sufficient support in the evidence.
It sufficiently appears that C. B. Jeffers deeded the land to W. C. Jeffers, and that the latter was in possession of the same when the instrument involved in this suit was executed. Appellant makes no claim of title other than that acquired from W. C. Jeffers. Where both parties claim under a common source of title, it is not necessary for either to go back of that common source in the proof. (Ginaca v. Peterson, 262 Fed. 904; Phillips v. Menotti, 167 Cal. 328, [139 Pac. 796].)
Appellant contends that she has established title by prescription. Her answer does not set up a prescriptive title but alleges merely ownership and possession for ten years. The testimony relative to the adverse character of her holding was conflicting, but there was ample evidence to show that it was not adverse. The court found against the allegation of ownership and such finding is conclusive on appeal. No complaint is made of the failure to find specifically upon the question of the prescriptive title claimed by the defendant, and none could well be made, because the finding is .as specific as the allegations of the answer.
No error appearing, the interlocutory and the final judgments are affirmed.
Burnett, J., and Hart, J., concurred.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- C. B. JEFFERS, Administrator, Etc., Respondent, v. NETTIE M. HULEN, Etc., Appellant
- Cited By
- 4 cases
- Status
- Published