Gross v. King

Bond, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case the appellant, claiming title by deed to a piece of land, of which he is in possession, in Anne Arundel County, filed a hill to have a later deed to the appellee, from other grantors, for the same piece of land, set aside as in fraud of the appellant’s rights. A demurrer to the hill was sustained, and the bill was dismissed; and the appeal is taken from that action. The facts averred are substantially these: In 1895 the county commissioners bought in the property at a sale for unpaid taxes, and in 1920 the appellant, upon paying accrued taxes, took a deed from the county commissioners, the attorney for' the commissioners having drawn the deed.

It now turns out that no deed had been executed and recorded for the sale to the county commissioners in 1895, and the only records of the tax sale which have been found consist in a copy of the advertisement of the sale, and an annotation on the assessment book, under the name of Dorcas M. Clark, the owner at that time, that the property had been purchased by the county and stricken from the books. Gross cleared and improved the land, building a house and planting an orchard on it, and posted a warning notice to trespassers, over his own name. The appellee, King, owned property immediately across a public road running between the two tracts. In 1924, after values in the neighborhood had become enhanced by the construction there of what is known as the Crain Highway, King sought out the heirs of Dorcas M. Clark, the owner at the time of the tax sale, and bought title from them.

The deed for that purchase, too, was prepared by the attorney who, as a former attorney for the county commissioners, prepared their deed to Gross. The appellant now charges that this deed to King was obtained with deliberate intent to defraud and dispossess the appellant, with knowledge on the part of the appellee and the ²⁹³ attorney of his deed and claim. And the present bill proceeds upon the theory that this constituted a fraud upon the appellant. We agree with the judges of the trial court that no fraud upon the appellant is shown by these allegations.

There is no fraud, in a legal sense, in a, man’s buying in a superior or conflicting title to a neighbor’s land. There is no breach of either legal or equitable duty, trust or confidence. 2 Pomeroy, Eq. Jurispr., sec. 873. The fact alleged, that the one attorney prepared the deed for the later purchase and for the earlier purchase as well, could not constitute