Glasgow v. Missouri Car & Foundry Co.
Glasgow v. Missouri Car & Foundry Co.
Opinion of the Court
— This is an appeal from a judgment of the circuit court of the city of St. Louis in favor of the defendant in a suit in ejectment, seeking to recover possession of a piece of real estate in the city of St. Louis. The petition is in the usual form, and the-answer consists of a general denial and a plea of the ten, twenty-four and thirty-year Statutes of Limitations.
A jury was waived and the case tried upon an agreed statement of facts. The agreed facts are as follows:
The fee-simple title to the land in contoversy became vested in William L. Ewing, and on October 29, 1849, he and his wife conveyed the same to William Glasgow, Jr., “in trust, nevertheless, and to the' express use and interest that the said premises shall be forever held for the sole and separate and exclusive benefit, use and behoof - of the said Mary Ewing Lane, party of the third part, without any account to any person whomsoever or any liability in any manner for the debts or liabilities of William Carr Lane, husband of the said Mary Ewing Lane; and in further trust that said party of the third part shall forever have and fully enjoy the pernancy of the profits, rents and issues of said premises, for which her receipt and acquittances shall forever be a sufficient discharge ; and that said party of the second part shall always sell and mortgage or lease the said premises or any part thereof, or any interest or estate therein, and execute
'No conveyance of this property from William Glasgow, Jr., or Mary E. Lane, or from any of their descendants, appears of record in the records of the city of St. Louis.
Mary E. Lane died intestate November 5, 1865, leaving as her sole heirs two daughters, Sarah L. Glasgow, wife of William Glasgow, Jr., and Anne E. Lane, originally one of the plaintiffs in this suit, both being at said date of legal age. Anne E. Lane died unmarried and without issue since the institution of the suit. She left a will, but made no mention of the property here involved, and the will contained no residue clause. Her sole heirs at law are the children of her sister, Sarah L. Glasgow. Mrs. Sarah L. Glasgow died February 28, 1887, leaving surviving her her husband, William L. Glasgow, Jr., and her children, Wm. C. Glasgow, Allen Glasgow, Frank A. Glasgow, Susan R. Carson, Mary Branch, Sarah L. G. Wilson and Annie Glasgow, plaintiffs herein. Her estate was administered in the St. Louis Probate Court and the property here involved was not inventoried. William Glasgow, Jr., husband of Sarah L. Glasgow, died January 31,1892.
The land in controversy was unimproved, unenclosed and unoccupied at all times prior to 1879; was subject to overflow from the Mississippi river and was not susceptible of continuous occupation and was
No taxes on the land had heen paid by plaintiffs or anyone under whom they claim since 1852. Defendant and those under whom it claims have paid taxes on this land continuously from 1852 to the present time, inclusive, said land having been assessed in their names since said date; in the name of Catherine M. Merry until her death, in the name of her heirs until' 1898, and in the name of defendant since said date.
Defendant entered into actual occupation of the premises in controversy in June, 1879, under lease executed by the heirs of Catherine M. Merry, raised the grade thereof and constructed buildings thereon. On December 11, 1897, defendant obtained a general warranty deed to the property from the heirs of Catherine M. Merry. Since June, 1879, defendant has been in actual, open, notorious and visible possession of the premises.
The court found for defendant, and after an unsuccessful motion for a new trial, plaintiffs have appealed to this court.
I. The contention in this cause hinges upon the proposition, first, whether plaintiffs, as the heirs of Mrs. William Glasgow, Jr., are barred by the ten, twenty or thirty-year Statute of Limitations. It is admitted that Miss Anne E. Lane and her heirs are barred by the actual adverse possession of defendant from 1879 until the commencement of this action in 1899, during all of which time Miss Lane was a feme sole, and could have brought her action by ejectment. As to her sister’s, Mrs. Glasgow’s, half, the conditions are different. From 1849 to 1879, the land in suit was vacant and unoccupied by any person and the constructive possession must be held to have been with the owner of the title.
It is insisted by defendant that the trustee William Glasgow, Jr., was barred by the ten-year limitation.
Counsel for defendant- concedes that if a conveyance be made to A in trust for B, wife of C, upon the death of C, the husband, the use will be executed in
And counsel for defendant go further, and concede that in the ease supposed, if B, the wife of 0, died leaving male children, the use will be executed by the statute in such children, but their proposition is that if the wife, in the supposed case, leave a married daughter, the use will not be executed, but the trust will remain an equitable one upon which the statute does not take effect, and in support of their position counsel cite Walton v. Ketchum, 147 Mo. l. c. 218. Counsel have misconstrued that case. There the trust was created not only for Mrs. Ann Yore during her life to receive the rents, profits and issues and to sell and convey as she, with the assent of her husband in writing, might direct, but provided that in case of the death of Patrick Yore and Ann, his wife, before the premises should be disposed of, then the same were to be held by said James Meegan, as trustee, for the sole use and benefit of the children of the said Patrick Yore, and Ann, his wife. In that case, by the very terms of the trust it was created for the children, and when Mrs. Yore died, the trustee was still vested with the legal estate in trust for the children, and as Mrs. Walton was then a married woman, the trust continued for her benefit and the statute did not execute it, but it has never been held to our knowledge, and certainly counsel have not cited us to any decision of any court of last resort which holds, that a trust created for a married woman alone, when the coverture ceased, still continued and was not executed in her heirs, if one or more of such heirs happened to be married women; but even if we should find such an opinion, we should not follow it, because we think it would be contrary to our Statute of
On the contrary, we hold that the trust ceased or was executed in the two daughters of Mrs. Lane, but the moment the title devolved upon Mrs. Glasgow to her half of the land, it also devolved upon her husband as tenant by the curtesy initiate. She could not sue for it, but the right of possession was in her husband, and she had no cause of action during her life, since her husband survived her, and neither did her children during their father’s life, which continued until 1892. They did not take through him, so the fact that he was barred could not affect them. [Hall v. French, 165 Mo. 430; Howell v. Jump, 140 Mo. 441; Shumate v. Snyder, 140 Mo. 77.]
As to the second contention, that the trust was an active and equitable one to which the Statute of Uses did not apply, of course, if counsel are right in their construction of the deed, then what we have said in regard to their first proposition will not affect their right to plead the Statutes of Limitations. The trust created by the deed was for the sole and separate use
There was no occasion to invoke this last clause upon which counsel base the claim that this was not a trust which the statute would execute upon the dissolution of the marriage of Mrs. Lane by her death. We think this was simply a trust to protect her estate from her husband and his creditors, and that upon her death nothing’ remained upon which the trustee could act and that upon her death the statute executed the trust. We have already distinguished this trust from that considered in Walton v. Ketchum, 147 Mo. 209. We think that by the rule announced in Pugh v. Hayes, 113 Mo. l. c. 432, this was a trust which the statute would execute. In that case this court said: “Where the estate is limited to a trustee to pay the rents and profits to another person for life, the trustee takes the legal estate, for he must receive them before he can make the payments; hut where the estate is limited to a trustee to permit and suffer another to have the rents, the statute rests the legal estate in such other person, because the trustee has no duties to perform.” We think there were no active, .duties devolved upon the trustee which required his retention of the estate after Mrs. Lane’s death and that the statute executed the trust, and for this reason also the statute did not • run against the heirs even though it ran against the trustee.
The second reply is that Mr. Glasgow might have stood by and permitted Mrs. Merry to pay his taxes all these years, knowing that the payment of taxes did not tend to prove adverse possession. The .high character of an honorable citizen, one whose name is connected with the history of the city of St. Louis, forbids our acceptance of such a reason, and certainly it utterly fails to explain his silence during the thirteen years of adverse actual and continuous possession from 1879 to 1892, which, at least, swept his own life estate from under his feet.
The third reason is that'he forgot he owned the land. It is conceded and admitted that he paid the taxes from 1849' to 1852; to say' he forgot in 1852 and all the years thereafter that he owned the land to which his wife held a recorded deed, and for the taxes on which he held the receipts, is to reject the ordinary and' common course of human conduct and experience. We think none of these reasons is satisfactory.
We think it is absolutely unreasonable that a man of Glasgow’s business capacity, after accepting the trust created by Mr. Ewing for the mother of Mr. Glasgow’s wife and paying the taxes thereon for 1849 to 1852 inclusive, should suddenly in 1852 forget to pay the taxes thereon and continue to forget for forty years thereafter to pay the taxes thereon; We can not conceive that he forgot that his wife and her sister, Miss Lane, had inherited this land from their mother, if such was indeed the fact, and Mrs. Lane had not conveyed it with his concurrence to Mrs. Merry, who began in 1852 to pay the taxes on it. We can not conceive of such a negligent disregard of the interest of his wife and her sister as must have occurred by his standing idly by and permitting a stranger to actually improve and occupy this land from 1879 to the date of his
In our opinion the circuit court upon the agreed statement of facts correctly found the issues for the defendant and its judgment is affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- WILLIAM C. GLASGOW v. MISSOURI CAR AND FOUNDRY COMPANY
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- 2 cases
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- Published