Cochran v. Cummings

Syllabus

Mescission of fraudulent contract.

Where a vendor of goods has been fraudulently induced to accept in payment, a conveyance of a worthless tract of land, he may repudiate the payment, and recover the price of the goods.

Case, for goods sold and delivered. There was a special defence, that the defendant had sold and conveyed to the plaintiffs, a quantity of land in the county of Northumberland, in satisfaction of their demand; and the deed of conveyance, dated in June 1799, was produced. But the plaintiffs insisted : 1st. That they took the conveyance only as a collateral security : and 2d. That they were imposed upon by the defendant, as to the quality of the land.

On the first point, the evidence was contradictory; and The Court left it, implicitly, to be decided by the jury.

On tbe second point, it was proved, that the defendant had represented the land as very valuable ; saying, that it was such as would sell, in two or three years, for a price, from two to six dollars an acre : hut in fact, the land was apart of a mountain, commonly called “ Jack’s Second Mountain so rude, that it could not he cultivated ; and so steep, that it was inaccessible, even to take off the wood, without incalculable expense and labor. In the charge of the court, on this point, it was said—