Oops … and a Further Oops in a Partition Suit
June 18, 2013 § 2 Comments
Sometimes in the euphoria of settlement, when the bright sunlight of concord and goodwill seems to dispel the gray clouds of discord and conflict, in our optimistic pursuit of a written agreement, we lose sight of the details, where devilment always lurks, and out of that inattention things can come dizzyingly unravelled, and then totally unhinged in a most discombobulating way.
That’s more or less what happened at the trial level in the case of Powell v. Gregory, decided by the COA on May 14, 2013.
Siblings Julia Powell, Mary Margaret Gregory, and Bennie Evans believed that they owned a “forty” that had been their parents’ property, and which they came to own via heirship. The “forty” actually consisted of 37.98 acres, or so they thought.
Julia had acquired fee simple title to 2.02 acres from her parents, located in the NW corner of the “forty,” where a home she occupied was located.
The three could not agree on how to divide the property, so the sisters sued Bennie, asking for partition in kind of the surface acreage only.
After suit was filed, the siblings learned that what they thought was a “short forty” of some 38 acres was actually a “long forty” of 47.64 acres, nearly ten acres more than they had anticipated.
[Author’s note: Notice how what everybody believes to be true keeps turning out not to be so?]
After some negotiation, the parties presented the chancellor with an agreed judgment that included the words, “This is a final judgment” (Note: for the uninitiated, that language is required by local rule in that district in any judgment finally adjudicating the ultimate issue). The judgment had attached a county ownership plat showing the general designation of division, with Julia and Mary Margaret to receive 5.94 acres each, and Bennie to receive the remaining 35.64 acres. The parties agreed also to division of taxes and survey expenses. Excepted from the agreement would be Julia’s separate two-acre tract.
The chancellor signed the agreed judgment. No one appealed.
When the surveyor went out, he discovered that Julia’s house was actually 20 feet west of the western border of her “excepted property,” amidst the “heir property,” and not located on her excepted parcel. Julia refused honor the agreement. A year after the original agreed judgment was entered, Mary Margaret filed an action for contempt, and Julia in response filed for relief under MRCP 60(b)(6).
The chancellor ruled that the original agreed judgment was contractual and enforceable. He ordered that the description to Julia’s 2.02 acres be amended by deed to be where she said it was, and directed that the remaining acreage be divided among the three by acreage as originally agreed. He denied Mary Margaret’s request to hold Julia in contempt. Julia filed a battery of motions under R59(a), 59(e) and 60, all of which were overruled. She appealed.
So, did the COA’s decision finally untangle the knot? Well, in a word, no.
Judge Fair’s opinion indicates that the court would have liked to, but for one dispositively complicating factor:
¶20. Based on the record before us, the chancellor would have been within his discretion in interpreting the intent of the parties in the agreed final judgment and fashioning a remedy to carry out that intent. However, we must reverse the second final judgment because of the issue of necessary parties. On November 4, 2010, Belissa, Julia’s daughter, recorded a warranty deed from Julia to herself dated November 3, with a description almost (because of what Julia claimed was a scrivener’s error creating a description that does not “close”) exactly matching that of the two acres described in her mother’s deed. So far as the record reveals, the court was not informed of the existence of Belissa’s deed until it was submitted into evidence at the hearing two months later.
So with a couple more runaway cars added to the trainwreck, back the parties go, now to bring Belissa aboard for Round Three of their unhappy saga that began more than five years ago with that hapless partition complaint. Unless something new is injected, my guess is that the outcome at ground level will be pretty much the same this next go-round as it has been up to now.
Clients always seem to be in such sure command of their facts, even when they have no legitimate basis therefor. When you take what they say at face value, especially in a matter as detail-and-fact dependent as a property case, you get what you pay for, so to speak.
CATES v. SWAIN CONCLUDED
May 13, 2013 § Leave a comment
I posted here and here about the saga of Cates v. Swain, the COA decision that essentially denied cohabitants any equitable relief to recover assets invested in the relationship. You can read the fact outline in that first prior post.
At trial the chancellor had rejected Mona Cates’ agrument that she was entitled to imposition of either a resulting or constructive trust, but granted her relief on the theory of unjust enrichment.
On appeal, the COA reversed, applying the rationales in Davis v. Davis, 643 So.2d 931 (Miss. 1994) and Estate of Alexander v. Alexander, 445 So.2d 836 (Miss. 1984), to reach the conclusion that equitable remedies are not available to unmarried parties who acquire assets titled in only one party’s name through the contributions of both. The court agreed with the chancellor that neither equitable trust should have been imposed, but disagreed that unjust enrichment could be applied.
On May 2, 2013, the MSSC reversed the COA decision and affirmed the chancellor on the theory of unjust enrichment. The court distinguished the cases that had been relied upon by the COA. The court did modify the amount awarded by the chancellor. Justice Dickinson, concurring in part and dissenting in part, would have remanded the case to the chancellor for further evidence on what would have been an equitable determination of what each party should receive, based on appreciation of the investments over time.
In my opinion, this decision clarifies the state of the law in an important area. Unmarried relationships are a fact in Mississippi, and there has to be a mechanism for people to recover money or property that in good conscience and justice should not be retained by another.
There is, of course, the danger that the doctrine will be overapplied and stretched to the breaking point. As the court’s opinion stated at ¶ 19, quoting an Iowa case, ” … [T]he doctrine of unjust enrichment is not ‘a roving mandate [for a court] to sort through terminated relationships in an attempt to nicely judge and balance the respective contributions of the parties.'” Applied carefully and judiciously, however, as the chancellor did at trial in this case, it’s a useful tool in an appropriate case, and it’s no longer precluded in our jurisprudence.
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