Sgarlat v. Diggory
Sgarlat v. Diggory
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
We are of opinion the learned court below committed no error in entering a judgment for the plaintiff notwithstanding the verdict. The action was ejectment. The plaintiff in his pleadings and at the trial exhibited a complete record title to the land in dispute. We are unable to perceive anything in this record that would furnish a solid foundation for any adverse claim by the defendant. The lot, the right of possession of which was the subject-matter of the action, was an unimproved one. It adjoined a lot of similar size which had been bought and paid for by the husband of the defendant. Upon this lot he had erected a building in which he lived during his lifetime and after his death his wife, the appellant, succeeded to his title. He had originally bought his lot by articles of agreement and upon payment of the purchase-money secured his deed as the contract provided he should.
His brother purchased the adjoining lot, the subject of this controversy, on a similar article of agreement. The purchase-money was payable in installments and the contract provided the vendor was to execute and deliver a deed only upon and after the payment of all of the purchase-money. This brother, George Diggory, made a number of payments of principal or interest, not always on the dates provided for in the contract but which aggregated approximately half of the purchase-money called for in the agreement. The last payment made by him was in 1897. He had been residing as a boarder in the house of his sister-in-law, the defendant appellant. Apparently with his permission she had from time to time made some use of the vacant lot or a portion of it as a garden, occupied it with temporary hen coops and the like. Some time after making his last payment in
There is evidence to warrant a finding that Davis himself had acquired some personal knowledge of the fact that George Diggory had in years gone by secured some equitable interest in the lot in question under an article of agreement. The extent of his knowledge of the situation, as it in fact was,.is not clearly disclosed by the evidence but is immaterial.
In 1914 he conveyed the lot in dispute to the present plaintiff. The latter went to' look at the property. On the trial of the case the question submitted to the jury was whether or not he discovered such evidence of an adverse occupancy of the lot by the defendant as would be sufficient to put him upon inquiry notwithstanding the fact that the record title of his grantor was clear. We are of opinion the evidence discloses nothing to support the finding of the jury in that respect. The learned court below therefore would have been fully warranted in giving a binding instruction to the jury to find for the plaintiff on the strength of his written and recorded title.
If we are to give due heed to our case of Shilanski v. Farrell, 57 Pa. Superior Ot. 137, we are obliged to conclude it disposes of practically every material question in this case. It is true in that case the action was brought by the purchaser under articles of agreement to recover the amount of money he had paid in installments after he had been in default and after his vendor had conveyed to another. But to dispose of that case properly it was necessary to determine the same questions that arise here. The covenants of the article of agreement
With the matters thus disposed of out of the case at bar, there remains nothing to show even a colorable title in the defendant upon which she could successfully resist the claim of the plaintiff. It is apparent that such fugitive and temporary possession as the present defendant may have from time to time exercised over the lot in dispute was with the consent of her brother-in-law, the owner of the equitable estate. At no time could it be said to have been adverse. She did not procure an assignment of his agreement until after the present action of ejectment had been instituted. Without further elaboration therefore we deem it sufficient to say we can find no reversible error exhibited by the record in this case. The assignments of error are overruled.
Judgment affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.