Kepner v. Weidensaul
Kepner v. Weidensaul
Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This is an action to foreclose a mortgage. It was ■ tried to the court; judgment was rendered for plaintiff; the answering defendants have appealed.
Briefly, the facts disclosed by the record are substantially as follows: John M. Kepner, a resident of San Francisco, was the owner of a.quarter section of land in Morton county. In January, 1920, he received a letter from H. S. Green, an official of the First National Bank of Elkhart, advising that C. L. Weidensaul desired to purchase the land, that he would pay $2,500 for it, $500 in cash, and give five notes for $400 each, one due each year, and secure them by a first mortgage on the property for the balance of the purchase price. Kepner accepted the proposition, sent a deed conveying the land to C. L. Weidensaul, and received in payment a remittance of $500 and the five notes and the mortgage on the land securing them, all purporting to be signed by G. L. Weidensaul, a widower, and the mortgage duly acknowledged. The deed and mortgage were duly recorded. Sometime thereafter a deed was recorded purporting to be
The answering defendants appeal. Their argument, in substance, is this: The plaintiff owned this land. He could convey it to whom
In deciding the case, the trial court spoke of the plaintiff’s lien as being a vendor’s lien. Appellants complain of that and point out that in this state there can be no vendor’s lien unless the same is founded on contract (citing Greeno v. Barnard, 18 Kan. 518; Felzien v. Wieck, 118 Kan. 194, 234 Pac. 944), and they argue that if C. L. Weidensaul knew nothing of this transaction, took no part in it, there could be no contract with him. The difficulty with this argument is that some one, using the name C. L. Weidensaul, did in fact make a contract with plaintiff, which contract was represented not only by the correspondence, but by the deed, notes and mortgage. There was a suggestion in the testimony that L. D. Weidensaul, the son of C. L. Weidensaul, who filed no answer here, was in the real-estate business, and that he desired to have this land in shape so that he could resell it, and that through Mr. Smith, of the bank, he handled this deal in the name of his father without his father’s knowledge and consent. But the court makes no finding on this question, and we do not regard it as material. One thing seems clear: Either C. L. Weidensaul was the purchaser of this property or he was not. If, as contended by appellants, he did not purchase the property, knew nothing about it, and did not execute the notes and mortgage, then in fact he never had any interest in it, and the appellants are in no better position than he was. They have no interest in it. In view of all the facts disclosed by the record, including the fact that the answering defendants asked to have their title quieted and thus made the matter of quieting title an issue in the case, the court might very well have made his decree quieting title against the answering defendants, and the court need not have ordered a sale of the property for the purpose of forfeiting or foreclosing the interest of these answering defendants.- But since the answering defendants have no real interest in the property they are in no position to complain of the form of the decree of the court.
The judgment of the court below is affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- John M. Kepner v. C. L. Weidensaul (Revived against Blanche Groves, Zula Bruchie and Lawrence Weidensaul, Heirs at Law of C. L. Weidensaul, Deceased)
- Status
- Published