Summary
In Crowe v. Lewin (95 N.Y. 423) there was a mistake of fact which invalidated the entire contract and carried down with it the assumption agreement.
Summary of this case from Gifford v. Father Matthew Total Abstinence Benefit SocietyOpinion
Submitted March 4, 1884
Decided April 15, 1884
Coles Morris and Michael H. Cardozo for appellant. William F. Reilly for respondents.
In this case the minds of the parties never met. The contract in form was not a contract in fact. It originated in mistake, and that mistake not mutual and about the same thing, but different on the part of each. Taking the findings as our guide, it appears that the plaintiff agreed to exchange his house and lot for four lots at Williams Bridge which the defendants represented that they owned and could convey. As matter of fact they did not own them, but did own a triangular parcel in the neighborhood fronting on the Bronx river, but of trifling value and much inferior area, which they say was what they intended to convey, but by mistake the four lots at Williams Bridge were substituted in the deed they gave. It is possible that the findings of fact might well have been different. The evidence on which they rest is quite slender and unsatisfactory, but we cannot say there is none. Assuming them to be true, the situation was this: The plaintiff came into court alleging that by the fraud and deceit of a false assertion of ownership he had been deprived of his property. The defendants rebutted the charge of fraud by showing a mistake, and it is only as the result of that explanation that fraud was not found. If the defendants' representation of ownership related to the four lots, it was a falsehood and a fraud. If it related to the Bronx river lots it was not so understood by the plaintiff, and he was misled by a mistake. There was thus either fraud or mistake against which equity may relieve. The defendants' mistake was that they conveyed what they did not own and did not mean to sell. The plaintiff's was that he bought what he meant to buy, but without the asserted title in his grantors. What one meant to sell the other did not mean to buy, and what one meant to buy the other did not mean to sell. Such was the judgment rendered and it was right. Its details are criticised in but one respect. There was a mortgage to a savings bank, resting as an incumbrance on the plaintiff's property, and which by acceptance of the deed the defendants assumed and agreed to pay, and they now complain that they are left liable to the savings bank for the amount of the mortgage debt. We do not think that result will follow. The judgment which declares that there was no effectual contract, and therefore no valid assumption of the mortgage, binds both parties and privies; and the bank, which had no right except through the promise to plaintiff, and dependent wholly upon it, and could only claim through it, is bound, if not by the judgment itself, at least by the effect of the judgment as annulling the whole transaction. The principle decided in Dunning v. Leavitt ( 85 N.Y. 30; 39 Am. Rep. 617) fully covers the point. There Mrs. Leavitt's promise to pay the mortgage debt was founded upon the conveyance to her, but the judgment in ejectment brought by the Howell heirs determined that no title passed to her by her deed, that the land was not transferred, and as a consequence that no consideration for her promise to the grantor for the benefit of the mortgage remained, and so she never became liable. The effect of the decree here is the same. It annuls the deed and adjudges that the land did not pass, and so the savings bank can have no right of action upon a promise divested by the judgment of any consideration. Its rights were wholly dependent upon an effectual transfer of the mortgaged property, and affected by the equities existing between the original parties.
The judgment should be affirmed, with costs.
All concur.
Judgment affirmed.