Ayers v. Carden
Ayers v. Carden
Opinion of the Court
Harold C. Ayers, in an equitable petition filed against Lamar Cook and W. Horace Carden, sought to reform a deed to real estate executed by the defendant Cook, on the grounds of mutual mistake and fraud upon the part of Cook in pointing out to the plaintiff, before the deed was executed, the eastern boundary line as being located at a certain point, and the deed as delivered not embracing a strip of land fronting 25 feet in width on a named street, which the plaintiff claimed he had purchased from Cook. The plaintiff also sought to enjoin the defendant Carden from trespassing on this strip by placing improvements thereon. On the trial of the case before a court and jury, the court entered a nonsuit as to Cook, and directed a verdict and entered a judgment in favor of Carden. By a direct bill of exceptions, the plaintiff assigns error on both judgments.
Construing the evidence most favorably to the plaintiff, it shows in summary: On September 20, 1954, Cook owned two tracts of land fronting 183 feet on the south side of Atlanta Street in the City of Bremen. On that date, the plaintiff contracted to buy the lot on which there was a residence, and Cook pointed out to him the northeast corner of the lot as being at a point on Atlanta Street where there was a telephone pole. The lot was not measured or surveyed at that time. Relying on Cook’s word that the northeast corner of the lot was the telephone pole, the plaintiff purchased the lot from Cook and went into possession of the property on September 20, 1954. At the time the deed was executed to the plaintiff on November 27, 1954, it does not appear that any representation was made by Cook to the plaintiff as to the location of the northeast corner, but the deed actually executed on that day to the plaintiff contains a description which shows that the lot and house which he purchased had a frontage of 80 feet on Atlanta Street, which made the northeast corner of the lot 25 feet west of the telephone pole. Not until the following April did the plaintiff read his deed, at which time he discovered that his lot had a frontage of 80 feet rather than 105 feet. The plaintiff got the property described in the deed. After going into possession of the house and lot on September 20, 1954, he planted grass and one shrub on the strip of land up to the telephone pole, which strip was not
Under the evidence, we are of the opinion that the trial court correctly disposed of the case as he did, under two well-recognized rules of equity. First, a bona, fide purchaser without notice of an equity will not be interfered with by equity (Code § 37-111); and second, equity will not grant reformation where the rights of bona fide purchasers for value aud without notice would be interfered with (Code § 37-213). It clearly appears from the evidence that, at the time Carden received his deed from Cook, he did not have any notice of the plaintiff’s claim to the strip of land which is embraced in the deed from Cook to Carden. Even if the planting of grass and the placing of one shrub thereon should be said to have put Carden on notice of the plaintiff’s possession of the strip, it does' not appear from the evidence that these acts had taken place between September 20, 1954, the time when the plaintiff took possession of the property under the contract to purchase the same, and October 13, 1954, when Carden received his deed from Cook. Further, it appears that the plain
The orders of nonsuit as to Cook and direction of a verdict for Carden were not erroneous.
Judgment affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.