Walker v. State
Walker v. State
Opinion of the Court
The plaintiff in error, hereinafter referred to as the defendant, was by information charged with the crime of obtaining an automobile of the alleged value of |600.00, by false pretenses, in the Criminal Court of Record of Volusia County, and was tried, convicted and sen-
Thirty-nine errors are assigned, but from the conclusions we have reached upon the facts and law of the case, we will discuss but one of them, since that one disposes of the entire case, and that is the denial of the defendant’s motion for new trial, made upon the ground that the verdict is contrary to law and the evidence in the case. A brief summary of the evidence for the State in snpport of the charge, makes out the following case: The prosecutor who is alleged to have been imposed upon by the alleged false pretense, himself sought the defendant saying to him that he had an automobile that he valued at $600 that he desired to dispose of. The defendant then told him that he had a ten acre lot of hammock land out in the country that he would give him together with $100 in cash in exchange for the automobile. Thereupon the prosecuting witness went out with the defendant and walked all over the lot of land, the defendant pointing out to him the boundaries, and again saying that there were five acres cleared and five acres in woodland, there being a fence around three sides of it. After inspecting the land the defendant and the prosecutor went back to town and on the following Monday morning the prosecutor again approached the defendant and told him he would exchange his automobile for the land they had inspected the previous Saturday, and $150.00. The defendant accepted this proposition and executed with his wife a warranty deed to the lot in question, stating in said deed that it contained ten acres more or less, and paid the $150.00 in money, upon which the prosecutor delivered the automobile. The deed by which the defendant acquired his title to the land in question also asserted that it contained ten acres, though there was some proof that the defend
Reference
- Full Case Name
- H. S. Walker, in Error v. The State of Florida, in Error
- Cited By
- 1 case
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- Published
- Syllabus
- False Pretenses — Representations in Reference to Number of Acres in Tract of Land Sold. i. Where the defendant obtains from the prosecutor an automobile in exchange for $150 in cash and a deed to a lot of land that he represented to contain ten acres, after having shown the land to the prosecutor and pointed out to him its true boundaries, and the prosecutor about six months after receiving his deed, lias tlie land surveyed and then discovers that it contains only five acres, and there is no evidence of any effort or intention on the defendant’s part to wilfully deceive the prosecutor or to defraud him in the transaction, except the bare expression of his opinion that there was ten acres in the tract, or that there were five acres cleared and five acres in woodland, which assertion, if it was false, must have been perfectly apparent to the prosecutor when he had the boundaries truly pointed out to him, and walked all over it with the defendant, this does not constitute such a false pretense for which the defendant can in law be held criminally liable. '¿. It is well settled that an expression of a false opinion or judgment is not within the statute. 3. Where the xiretense relied uxion to support the crime is absurd or irrational, or such as the party injured had at hand at the very time the means of detecting, it does not constitute a criminal offense.