Stone v. Houghton
Stone v. Houghton
Opinion of the Court
Upon the trial plaintiffs introduced testimony showing that the representations alleged in their petition were, in fact, made by appellee. It was also shown by them that pending the negotiations with appellee they employed another attorney, who conferred with appellee concerning the correspondence he had received, and, after so doing, advised appellants to execute the deed. Appellants introduced no testimony to show title in themselves, nor was there any direct testimony to show that they were in possession of the land at the time the deed was executed. It would seem from the testimony that the suit was tried upon the assumption by the parties that appellants were in possession of the land and that their claim of title rested upon a tax deed, but the date of such deed, whether or not it was ever recorded, and how long appellants had been in possession of the land, does not appear, even inferentially, from any evidence contained in the record.
Appellee introduced in evidence the patent to the land in favor of Elizabeth Moran, also an affidavit purporting to show that certain parties named in the affidavit were the heirs of Elizabeth Moran, also letters purporting to have been written to appellee by a person claiming to be an attorney and to have authority to represent those heirs. These letters, together with the affidavit, are essentially the same documents as appellee represented to appellants he had received. However, there was no proof that they were fictitious, or that the facts, which the documents purported to show, were false, and that ap-pellee did not in good faith believe that they were genuine.
The trial court gave a peremptory instruction in favor of appellee, and this ruling is made the basis of appellants’ seventh assignment of error. As shown above, there is an entire failure to sustain by evidence the allegations of misrepresentations inducing appellants to execute the deed, and, as it was incumbent upon appellants to sustain those allegations by proof as a condition to a recovery, there was no error in .giving the instruction.
We have found no error in the record, and the judgment is affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.