{ "id": 1467047, "name": "Dill, Trustee, v. Snodgress", "name_abbreviation": "Dill v. Snodgress", "decision_date": "1948-05-24", "docket_number": "4-8521", "first_page": "526", "last_page": "532", "citations": [ { "type": "official", "cite": "213 Ark. 526" }, { "type": "parallel", "cite": "211 S.W.2d 440" } ], "court": { "name_abbreviation": "Ark.", "id": 8808, "name": "Arkansas Supreme Court" }, "jurisdiction": { "id": 34, "name_long": "Arkansas", "name": "Ark." }, "cites_to": [ { "cite": "84 S. W. 726", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "73 Ark. 557", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1503996 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/73/0557-01" ] }, { "cite": "210 Ark. 416", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 8721009 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/210/0416-01" ] }, { "cite": "86 S. W. 852", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "74 Ark. 383", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 8721529 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/74/0383-01" ] }, { "cite": "36 S. W. 2d 398", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.2d", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "183 Ark. 469", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1441776 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/183/0469-01" ] }, { "cite": "203 Ark. 274", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1446906 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/203/0274-01" ] }, { "cite": "199 Ark. 435", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1456514 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/199/0435-01" ] }, { "cite": "209 Ark. 1107", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1475884 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/209/1107-01" ] }, { "cite": "210 Ark. 699", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 8723734 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/210/0699-01" ] }, { "cite": "206 Ark. 1023", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1485007 ], "weight": 2, "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/206/1023-01" ] }, { "cite": "183 S. W. 955", "category": "reporters:state_regional", "reporter": "S.W.", "opinion_index": 0 }, { "cite": "122 Ark. 445", "category": "reporters:state", "reporter": "Ark.", "case_ids": [ 1558166 ], "opinion_index": 0, "case_paths": [ "/ark/122/0445-01" ] } ], "analysis": { "cardinality": 679, "char_count": 11885, "ocr_confidence": 0.513, "pagerank": { "raw": 5.4837689389523514e-08, "percentile": 0.34356636236321114 }, "sha256": "b23c6c1bfa4edbd8974f08cfda3b3317b1520d510174d317d960af9bbf17cb9a", "simhash": "1:03f49e7725dfc94a", "word_count": 2055 }, "last_updated": "2023-07-14T14:58:24.264428+00:00", "provenance": { "date_added": "2019-08-29", "source": "Harvard", "batch": "2018" }, "casebody": { "judges": [], "parties": [ "Dill, Trustee, v. Snodgress." ], "opinions": [ { "text": "G-rieein -Smith, Chief Justice.\nThe controversy involves title to approximately seven and a half acres of unimproved land within the corporate limits of Little Rock.\nIn October 1923 the then owner, Ella Lurtey, contracted a sale to W. M. McNutt. Approximately nine years later McNutt assigned his contract to Fred A. Snodgress for a cash consideration of $300. At the time this assignment was made \u2014 -June 9, 1924 \u2014 McNutt and his wife, by deed, conveyed their equity to Snodgress, and-, the deed was recorded. The Lurtey contract obligated the owner to execute a warranty deed to McNutt when $2,200 had been paid.\nJuly 26,1924, Snodgress deeded the property to Mark and Viola Owens, husband and wife, and this deed was recorded. Finding that they would be unable to discharge their obligations to Snodgress, the grantees reconveyed to him by deed of July 9,1925. This instrument was not recorded. Thereafter Snodgress paid on the Lurtey obligation until total credits aggregated $1,759.36. Altogether, taxes included, he had paid $2,500.\nSnodgress testified that Ella Lurtey left Little Rock without'giving him a forwarding address, and that he did not know where she was. He owed three or four hundred dollars, but the debt was barred by limitation.\nS. L. Dill is engaged in the real estate business, and testified that for a year or more he had been interested in the property and had tried to get in touch with the owner. Through his attorney, Tilghman Dixon, he succeeded in locating Viola Owens in California at Pasadena, (her husband having died). Mrs. Owens\u2019 California attorney \u2014 Morton H. Eddy \u2014 -finally wrote that his client would execute a quitclaim deed for $100.\nDill says that in purchasing the property he was representing family interests, including his father, mother, a brother, and himself; hence it was sought to put the title in him as trustee. Dill admitted that before attempting to find Mrs. Owens he went to Snodgress \u2019 office and asked where Mrs. Owens could be found. Snodgress, according to Dill, told him that he (Snodgress) was the owner, Dill adding, \u201cBut according to the record I couldn\u2019t find where it was indicated. I also told [Snodgress] that if he could offer any evidence of ownership, I would make an attempt to trade with him; and that is as far as I would go.\u201d Dill\u2019s attorney asked, \u201cDid you tell [Snodgress] that if he had a deed of any kind to produce it?\u201d Answer: \u201cI told him if he could show he was the owner I would be glad to try and work out a trade with him.\u2019\u2019 Question: \u201cAnd he did not, at any time, show you a deed or any instrument of any kind?\u201d Answer: \u201cNo, sir; I have never seen a deed from Mr. Snodgress yet myself.\u201d Later Dill testified he was told Snodgress had a deed from Owens.\nSnodgress testified that he had practiced law in Little Rock for thirty-five years and was owner of the property in question. He identified the various documents to which reference has been made, and verified signatures. Dill called at his office at least three times to discuss buying the property, and mentioned the matter once or twice on the street. . The witness said he told Dill there was a balance due Mrs. Lurtey; that she was dead, or her address was unknown. Dill\u2019s plan was to plat the property. He was shown a file disclosing delinquent tax obligations. In this file there were three deeds, including the one from Mark and Viola Owens that had not been recorded; and, said Snodgress, \u201cI showed [Dill] the deed and told him about the trouble I was having with Mrs. Lurtey. \u2019 \u2019\nAfter Dill\u2019s conversation with Snodgress he met a son of Viola Owens, who was temporarily in North Little Rock. At this time the 'California address had not been ascertained, or, if it had been, Mrs. Owens was not willing to sell. This is shown by an Eddy-to-Dixon letter, in which Eddy said he had talked with a daughter of Mrs. Owens, \u201c . . . who told me her mother desired to do nothing. I, frankly, do not understand her attitude, but that is her present conclusion. I told the daughter she might as well sign the quitclaim deed and let you handle the rest.\u201d- This letter was dated June 6,1947, and refers to a communication from Dixon dated May 13th.-\nAppellee\u2019s counsel argues that something said to Mrs. Owens \u2019 son by Dill or those representing him must have been persuasive, and that the son communicated with his mother, for on June 24th Eddy telegraphed Dixon that Mrs. Owens had just informed him she would sell for $100. The deed, seemingly, had been prepared in Little Rock and forwarded to Pasadena. Dill caused it to be recorded July 1,1947.\nIt will thus be seen that Dill as trustee claims under a quitclaim deed executed by one of two persons, and that ownership of the land, prima facie, was in Mark and Viola Owens, to whom Snodgress had conveyed by deed duly recorded; while upon the other hand Snodgress held a deed from Mark and Viola Owens, executed prior to Viola\u2019s quitclaim to Dill; but this deed had not been recorded.\nSince occupancy by Snodgress was at one time actual, (a dilapidated house having been destroyed) the question is one of fact: Did evidence submitted by Snodgress preponderate in favor of his contention that Dill had actual notice of his interest? In The Henry Wrape Co. v. Cox, 122 Ark. 445, 183 S. W. 955, it was said that \u201cif the plaintiff took the quitclaim deed from its immediate grantor without notice of an outstanding conveyance or obligation respecting the property, or notice of facts which, if followed up, would have led to knowledge of such outstanding conveyance or equity, it was entitled to protection as a bona fide purchaser upon showing that the consideration stipulated had been paid, and that such consideration was a fair price for the claim or interest designated.\u201d\nWhile an unrecorded mortgage is not a lien on the property as against a stranger \u2014 Sims v. Petree, 206 Ark. 1023, 178 S. W. 2d 1016 (cited in Primm v. Farrell-Cooper Lumber Co., 210 Ark. 699, 197 S. W. 2d 557) \u2014 and this is true although there may have been actual knowledge of the existence of the mortgage, the same rule does not protect one who, with notice' that the rpcord owner of property has conveyed it, procures from such owner a quitclaim deed; and this governs in the case at bar, where the price paid was only a twentieth of actual value. See Shelly Oil Co. v. Johnson, 209 Ark. 1107, at pages 1122-23; 194 S. W. 2d 425, at pages 432-33. We think the Chancellor did not misjudge the weight of evidence in holding that Dill had knowledge of the Snodgress deed. Certainly Dill had information from which knowledge could have been acquired, for the very person from whom he procured the quitclaim deed was one of the two who had formerly conveyed.\nWhen Dill filed his complaint against Snodgress, Manie Schuman was named as a defendant tax title purchaser, he having in 1940 procured the Land Commissioner \u2019s deed for 1936 forfeiture. There is a stipulation that sale to the State was void because there was included in the sum demanded the so-called pension tax. Adamson v. City of Little Rock, 199 Ark. 435, 134 S. W. 2d 558. Schuman moved to dismiss on the ground that neither Dill nor his predecessors in title was owner of the land in 1936, and therefore each was without legal authority to question the sale. Schuman made the further claim that following his purchase in 1940 he paid taxes for seven consecutive years, and that his right to the property had accrued through adverse possession, under Pope\u2019s Digest, \u00a7 8920. In his brief Schuman says: \u2018 \u2018 The decree [finding for Snodgress and against Dill and Schuman] should be reversed, and [the cause] remanded with directions to dismiss the suit as a whole, as we [have all] failed to show a present right to title. \u2019 \u2019\nSection 8920 of Pope\u2019s Digest deems unimproved and uninclosed land to be in the possession of one who under color of title has paid taxes, but the benefits created are available only to a person who himself or those under whom he claims \u201cshall have paid such taxes for at least seven years in succession.\u201d The Act does not apply to lands fenced or in cultivation. In Schmeltzer v. Scheid, 203 Ark. 274, 157 S. W. 2d 193, it was,held that \u00a7 8920 \u201c . . . applies to urban as well as rural unoccupied, wild, or uninclosed land.\u201d Actual language of the statute is \u201cunimproved and uninclosed land,\u201d not \u201cunoccupied, wild, or uninclosed land.\u201d Whether the urban property contended for by Dill and Snodgress falls properly within the statutory intent, irrespective of the exact language used in construing it, is unimportant in view of Schuman\u2019s concession that he should not prevail. Although Schuman alleged the land was unimproved and uninclosed, Snodgress testified that it was fenced when he bought; that the two-room house had been destroyed, and that vandals took the fence. There is no proof that the fence was destroyed more than seven years prior to the time suit was filed, lienee nothing definite upon which to invoke \u00a7 8920.\nCounsel for Schuman, in reviewing transactions showing the Lurtey-to-McNutt contract, the McNutt assignment to Snodgress, the McNutt warranty deed to Snodgress, the Snodgress deed to Mark and Viola Owens and their reconveyance to Snodgress, Viola Owens.\u2019 quitclaim deed to Dill, trustee, and a quitclaim deed from the McNutts to Dill, trustee (July 14,1947), argues that neither Dill nor Snodgress can question validity of the Land Commissioner\u2019s deed without showing that the owner or those through whom he claims had title to the property when it forfeited.\nThere is the further argument that Snodgress, \u201cby his apparent abandonment, lost whatever right he formerly may have had,\u201d evidence of this status being failure to pay the admitted balance, and long delay in asserting title. In support our attention is called to Hopper v. Chandler, 183 Ark. 469, 36 S. W. 2d 398. We agree with counsel for appellee that language quoted in the Hopper case upon which Schuman relies is applicable only where the attack is upon a deed executed by the County Clerk. See St. Louis Refrigerator & Wooden Gutter Co. v. Thornton, 74 Ark. 383, 86 S. W. 852; Stanton v. Moore, 210 Ark. 416, 196 S. W. 2d 573; Pope\u2019s Digest, \u00a7 13874. Judge Riddick, in Rhea v. McWilliams, 73 Ark. 557, 84 S. W. 726, said that the statute was enacted for protection of parties holding under tax titles, and was intended to cure defects in such titles as against those having no interest in the land at the time of sale; nor does it apply in cases of conflicting tax titles. Schuman\u2019s deed, it should he remembered, was from the Land Commissioner.\nIt is our view that Snodgress had an interest in the property that entitled him to contest Schuman\u2019s tax title. Snodgress assumed obligations of the McNutt contract with Mrs. Lurtey, including the duty to pay taxes. One who by contract is required to pay taxes is by law entitled to redeem. There is no substantial denial of the statement by Snodgress that diligent effort was exerted to locate the record owner, although appellee admits that during the \u201clean years\u201d the contract was retained only through courtesy of Willis Holmes and E. G. Shoffner, who represented Mrs. Lurtey. While Snodgress spoke of the balance due on the contract and said it was barred by time, he could not compel Mrs. Lurtey (if alive, or her heirs, if she be dead) to execute a deed in evidence of the title while at the same time pleading limitation; nor does Snodgress\u2019 statement that the debt was barred n'ecessarily mean that he would plead limitation. On the contrary he expressed a willingness to discharge the obligation.\nThe Chancellor correctly determined all issues. Affirmed.\nThe briefs refer to Mrs. Lurtey as \u201cElta\u201d and as \u201cElla.\u201d", "type": "majority", "author": "G-rieein -Smith, Chief Justice." } ], "attorneys": [ "Tilghman E. Dixon and Wm. J. Kirby, for appellant.", "A. F. House, for appellee." ], "corrections": "", "head_matter": "Dill, Trustee, v. Snodgress.\n4-8521\n211 S. W. 2d 440\nOpinion delivered May 24, 1948.\nTilghman E. Dixon and Wm. J. Kirby, for appellant.\nA. F. House, for appellee." }, "file_name": "0526-01", "first_page_order": 542, "last_page_order": 548 }