Bladen v. Wells

.Miller, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant in his answer denies the parol agreement which the bill seeks to enforce, and to all the testimony adduced to establish it, he has filed exceptions as being inadmissible to vary, alter, explain or .contradict the deed of the 17th of September, 1864. ⁵⁸¹ No principle of law is more firmly settled than that which excludes parol evidence from being used either at law or in equity for the purpose of contradicting, adding to, subtracting from, or varying the terms of a deed, or controlling its legal operation and effect, except where it is impeached for fraud, or where it is sought to be reformed upon the allegations of fraud, accident or mistake. It would be useless to cite the numerous instances in which our predecessors have enforced this doctrine, and held that all oral negotiations or stipulations between the parties preceding or accompanying the execution of a written instrument, are to be regarded as merged in it, and the latter treated as the exclusive medium of ascertaining the agreement by which the contracting parties bound themselves. Is this a ease to which this general rule is applicable?

The deed “in consideration of $1,300,” conveys to the grantee “all” the several named tracts of land, the title to which the grantors derived under Hyatt’s will, “ containing about two hundred and thirty acres adjoining,” &c., “except that part of said land containing about forty acres,” which the grantors had previously, in the same year, conveyed to one Wood, and contains a covenant on the part of the grantors to warrant the land thereby conveyed, “against all persons, claims and demands whatsoever.” The bill charges that at the time the oral contract of purchase was made, the land was supposed to contain about one hundred and thirty acres, and that the vendee bought it for $10 per acre, payable in gold, or $20 in currency, at the option of the vendors, and upon the understanding and agreement then entered into, that if the land did not contain more than one hundred and forty acres, the vendee was to have it, but if it did contain more than that quantity, he was to pay for the excess over one hundred and thirty acres at the same rate per acre, and so promised; that relying on this promise and on the legal validity of this agreement, the vendors received from the vendee, $1,300 in gold, and then ⁵⁸² executed and delivered to him a deed in fee for one hundred and thirty acres of the said land, which is the deed of the 17th of September, 1864; that by survey the land is found to contain one hundred and fifty-four and a half acres, and the prayer of the bill is that the vendee may be compelled to perform his said contract by paying for the excess of twenty-four and one-half acres, at $20 per acre, in currency, and accept from the vendors a new deed for the one hundred and fifty-four and a half acres. The alleged contract and the case made by the bill, are inconsistent with the deed in at least two important particulars. 1st. The legal effect and operation of the deed in its granting .and descriptive parts, is to convey all the land not previously conveyed to Wood, no matter what the quantity might be. It is clearly not a deed for one hundred and thirty acres, part of said land as stated in the bill, and Cannot therefore be regarded as executed in part performance of the alleged contract.

Indeed, the contract as stated and proved, does not require the execution of such a deed, and the description it contains of the land, not only negatives any supposed theory of the deed being in part performance of the contract, but is wholly inconsistent with the idea, that the parties then supposed the land to contain only about one hundred and thirty acres, for so far as quantity is concerned, the deed speaks of it in effect as containing one hundred and ninety acres. 2d. The consideration stated in the deed is $1,300 for the whole land conveyed, and it is admitted this has been paid. It is true, receipts and acknowledgments in deeds of payment' of the purchase money, are only prima fade evidence of the fact of payment, and this may be disproved by parol. And so where a deed is assailed for fraud, the grantee may support it by showing the same kind of consideration, differing only in amount from that expressed in the deed; but we have found no case where the grantor has been allowed to aver, ⁵⁸³ as against the grantee, that the amount of the consideration, money, expressed in the deed as the price for the land thereby conveyed, is not the true contract between them, in this particular, and there is no reason why any parol contract varying the deed in this respect, should not be excluded by the general rule as much as if it varied the deed in any other part, and such have been the repeated decisions of Courts of the highest authority.

Howes vs. Barker, 3 Johns., 506 ; Northrop