Flanagan v. Fox

Plaintiffs testatrix entered into a contract with defendant for the purchase by her of certain lands on Brad hurst avenue in the city of New York. This contract among other things provided that “ the vendor shall give and the vendee shall accept a title such as the Title Guarantee & Trust company will approve.” At the time appointed for the delivery of the deed of conveyance in exchange for the payment of the balance of the purchase money the title company refused to approve the title and.the vendee thereupon declined to accept it and to pay the purchase money. On the trial of this action, which was brought to recover the sum paid on account of the purchase money, at the time of the making of the contract, with the expenses incurred by the vendee in the investigation of the vendor’s title, the above facts appeared, as did also that the title company refused to approve the title owing to the opinion of its counsel that the ownership of part of the lands mentioned in the contract, which extended into a former swamp, was in doubt, and that, because of an alleged irregularity in a certain action in the supreme court wherein Lydia Beebe, Louisa Dekay Townsend, and others, were plaintiffs, and Andrew L. Hamersiey and others were defendants, which was brought for the partition of lands of which the lands described in the contract were a part, the interest of a former co-tenant, Charles Van Bensselaer Townsend, was still outstanding in him. No evidence of any facts of which the doubtful character of the title to the swamp lands was predicable in the opinion of the title company’s counsel was adduced. Concerning counsel’s other objection, however, the record of this appeal shows that the alleged irregularity referred to arose from the fact that the judgment roll in the partition action failed to show that notice of application to the court for the appointment of a guardian ad litem for said Charles Van Bensselaer Townsend, who was the son and heir-at-law of Louisa Dekay Townsend, a deceased plaintiff, and at the time an infant under fourteen years of age, was given either to the infant or his general guardian, or to the person with whom the infant then resided. The judgment roll was received in evidence. It appeared therefrom that by an order of the court, dated March 15, 1869, the action was revived and leave given to the surviving plaintiffs to bring the infant in as a party defendant by service of a supplemental summons and complaint; that such service was made both upon the infant and his general guardian and that a guardian ad litem was thereafter appointed for the infant who appeared and answered in his behalf. The application for the appointment of a guardian ad litem, we apprehend, was

In passing we may say that upon the evidence- we concur in the views of the trial judge that the objections raised by the Title Company’s counsel did not point out any defect in the vendor’s title. It is not necessary to discuss them, however, for be that as it may, it was in our opinion error to dismiss the complaint.

“Expressio unius est exclusio alterius,” “Expressum facit cessare tactum," Broom’s Legal Maxims p. 650. Hence, if the contracting parties have expressly provided for the same subject matter, that which the law would otherwise have implied does -not prevail, Chitty on contracts, vol. 1, p. 89. Again, it is a fundamental rule of construction that effect must be given to every part of the contract; Parsons on contracts, vol. 2, p. 505. If therefore the language of a particular covenant is fairly open to a construction that the parties intended to create a right and to impose a correlative obligation, which would not have been extant without it-it will be error to assume that the covenant is cumulative respecting an implied right and its corresponding obligation and so, redundant. In every contract for the purchase and sale of real property a covenant on the part of the vendor to ten dor a-good title,—that is to say—one free from valid legal objection, will be implied, if the vendee has not agreed to be content with another or different one, Suydan on Vendors, vol. 1, p. 16; Gerard’s Titles to Eeal Estate 3rd ed. p. 482, and conforming, therefore, to the maxims and rule above stated it must be assumed that the parties to the contract, for the breach of which this action was brought, meant just what they said when the vendor agreed to give, and the vendee agreed to accept a title such as the Title Company would approve. Obviously, to hold that this meant no more than that the vender should tender a good title, one free from valid legal objection, is in effect to condemn the covenant as meaningless or redundant.

In Hudson v. Buck, 23 English R. Moak’s Notes, p. 808, 811, the court construed a contract to purchase “subject to the approval of the title by the purchaser’s solictor ” to comprehend something more than an obligation on the part of the vendor to tender merely a title free from valid legal objection. Indeed, the court intimated that the vendee’s exaction of the condition that the title should be appioved by his solicitor was regarded by it as an intentional precaution on his part against the possibility of being subjected to the vexation and expense of litigating disputed questions affecting the title by reason of his having entered into the contract of purchase; and such, it seems to us, was the purport of the covenant in the case at bar. Why else should the parties have stipulated that the Title Company shall be the sole

Nor is the party who has agreed to secure the act of a third person as a condition precedent to performance by the other of ■ the contracting parties absolved from compliance with the condition because of the unreasonable refusal of the third person. The parties have expressly agreed that his act shall be material. Whether it is so in fact, or not, is beyond the province of the courts to decide. The courts cannot make an agreement for the parties and cannot therefore dispense with a condition which they have imposed. If otherwise, one of the contracting parties could be required to accept that which he has not agreed to accept under pain of being refused aid if the other has failed to offer that which he has agreed to give. TJiere is a class of cases, notably those involving building contracts of the kind hereinbefore mentioned, wherein it has been held that if the third person unreasonably, or in bad faith, refuses to do the act required of him, performance by the contracting party who had agreed, to procure that act to be done may be dispensed with in that respect. All of those cases, however, differ from this in that in those the contract was partly executed by the party who was permitted to recover. He had parted with something of value, either in services or materials, to the other of the contracting parties, which it would have been unconscionable for the latter to retain and yet to refuse to pay the agreed or reasonable value thereof. Here however, the vendor has parted with nothing. The contract remained wholly unexecuted on his part

The opinion of Judge Brown in Vought et al v. Williams, 120 N.Y. 253 , 256; 30 St. Rep. 899 ; to the effect that a covenant by the vendor to convey by a title such as the vendee’s solicitor should approve does not require performance of a condition precedent by the vendor, is obiter dictum. That was an action for specific performance against the vendee and the decision of the court in affirming a judgment denying the relief demanded was as in Hudson v. Buck, supra, predicated of the non-marketability of the title.

On a former" appeal herein to the general term of the court below the latter intimated in its opinion Flanagan v. Fox, 52 St. Rep., 432 ; that the case at bar, is controlled by the principles which distinguish those cases wherein it was held that a promise to perform services, or to sell and convey property, satisfactory to

We may add that if the party who had covenanted to procure the approval of a third person as a condition precedent to his right of performance by the other of the contracting parties is prevented from procuring it by the act of the latter, in that event the former will be relieved from performance in that respect, since under such circumstances the latter will be deemed to have waived it. Ho one will be permitted to urge his own wrong to the detriment of another. But that plaintiff did in any manner hinder defendant from procuring the Title Company’s approval of his title does not appear.

The judgments of the general and trial terms of the court below should be reversed and a new trial ordered, with costs to the appellant to abide the event.