Helmik v. Pratt

Offutt, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Katie Mladejovsky, a resident of Baltimore County, died on January- 8th, 1926, leaving a will, executed in due form, in which she named John J. Pratt and Anna Helmik executors. The will was probated in ordinary course and, Anna Helmik having died, Pratt qualified as sole executor. After Pratt had qualified as executor, John Helmik, the .appellant, demanded that he convey to him, Helmik, a lot -of ground, which he alleged Mrs. Mladejovsky had sold to him by a valid and enforceable contract.

Pratt refused to comply with that demand, and on March 15th, 1927, Helmik filed, in'the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, a bill for the specific performance of the alleged contract, against the executor. The defendant demurred to the bill and, the demurrer having been overruled, he answered. The case was tried in open court, and, at the conclusion of the complainant’s case, the court declined to hear evidence for the respondent, and later, on May 31st, 1927, signed a decree dismissing the bill. The appeal is from that decree. ⁶⁸⁷ The contract referred to in the hill of complaint is in the following form: “Dec. 16, 1926. “This is to certify that I, the 'undersigned on the above date sold to John Helmik, one unimproved lot located in Balto.

County for the stun of $750.00, seven hundred and fifty dollars for which I have received this date the sum of $600.00, six hundred dollars, the balance to be paid in ninety days from above date. “Description as follows: “75 yards facing Back River and running north from a fence surrounding a place known as Charles Wright, thence west 75 yards, parallel with Eastern Ave., thence south 75 yards, thence east to place of beginning. The said lot is a part of what was formerly known as G-ilmor property, Eairy Grove and Columbus Park. “Katie Mladejovsky. “Test: “Robert H. Lafferty.” Although the defendant intimates rather than charges in his answer that the signature attached to the contract, and purporting to be that of Mrs. Mladejovsky, is not in fact her signature, the only evidence offered at the trial shows that it was. It further appeared from the testimony of Robert II. Lafferty, the witness to the contract, that it was executed under the following circumstances: • Lafferty, at one time a policeman, is now in the “collection and investigating business” and has, he said, “often made out contracts and leases for people, bills of sale, etc.” He knew Mrs. Mladejovsky and was a frequent visitor at her home.

In the conrse of his testimony he said that, on or about December 16th, 1926, he “received a telephone call at my home at about ten thirty in the morning, in whicli she requested me to come to her home, that she had some writing for me to do, the words she used, and I got on the car that leaves Holliday and Baltimore Streets eleven o’clock, and ⁶⁸⁸ I suppose I arrived there about 11.20 or 11.25 in the morning. * * * She said, Mr. Lafferty, I want you to do some wilting for me, and I said, 'What is it, Mrs. Mollie ?’ She said, 'I sold John a piece of land, I want you give him a receipt’; I said, 'All right, Mrs. Mollie, what piece of land?’ She said, 'the piece of land located down there at Charlie Wright’s place,’ and I said, 'It would have to be described,’ and I immediately went down with John and Mrs. Mollie and looked at that piece of land, and I described the land as near as I could, as I knew what I thought was looking in an eastern direction which I found out from the survey filed. I was a little northeast and she told me seventy-five yards each way, I thought it was peculiar, seventy-five yards, but I didn’t question her, and she said to give him seventy-five yards on Back River and seventy-five yards in a northern direction and seventy-five yards in a southerly direction and seventy-five yards in an eastern direction to the point of beginning, and I wrote the contract as follows: "Beginning at a point at a fence facing Back River and a place called Charles Wright’s place, that was as near as I could describe it, and, I said, running north parallel with Back River seventy-five yards, thence in a westerly direction seventy-five yards, and thence in a southerly direction, seventy-five yards and thence in an eastern direction seventy-five yards to the point of beginning seventy-five yards, the property known as Gilmor property, Eairy Grove and also as Columbus Park. I asked her if that was correct. * * * We went on the property and around it both and Mr. Helrnik, John, contemplated getting that property. Q. Did they both agree as to where the property was located ?

A. Absolutely. Q. Was that definitely understood by both ? A. Certainly. She showed the land to me and there was nothing else to do; seventy-five square yards, that is all there was to it.” He also said that the land described in the contract was the land he went over with her, and that the lot sold to Helrnik was part of a larger tract of forty-eight acres owned by Mrs. Mladejovsky.

There was other evidence offered by the complainant tending to corroborate Lafferty, but, since it adds nothing to ⁶⁸⁹ the legal effect of that to which we have referred, no further reference to it need be made. After that testimony had been offered, Albert E. Pohmer, a surveyor, who had “worked” all over the land in controversy, was called, apparently to prove, (1) that the land described in the contract could be identified and located, and (2) its value. He testified that he had prepared a plat from field notes of an actual survey which he had made of the property; that he had a copy of the contract, and “from that copy” he “went over the land.” He was then asked whether the following description of the property, as given in the bill of complaint: “Beginning at a point on the shore line of Back Eiver, where the southeasternmost outline of the whole tract of land, described in the deed recorded among the Land Eecords of Baltimore County, in Liber W. P. C. No. 331, folio 197, would intersect the shore line of said river and running thence from said place of beginning and binding on the outlines of the land described in said deed south 28 degrees 54 minutes west 225 feet, thence leaving said outline and running north 40 degrees 35 minutes west 225 feet, thence north 31 degrees 19 minutes east 225 feet, to the shore line and waters of Back Eiver, south 21 degrees 31 minutes east 100 feet and south 54 degrees 44 minutes east 125 feet to the place of beginning,” was prepared by him “from the contract.” An objection to that question was sustained, and the complainant then offered to prove that “the contract of sale between John IJelmik and Katie Mladejovsky admits of no difference of opinion; that the description of the land mentioned in this contract is easily ascertainable and that the said contract is not vague and uncertain, but is definite in its terms and easily understood and described.” That offer was also overruled and exceptions noted to these rulings. The complainant then rested, and the court announced that it would write an opinion on the complainant’s testimony, and subsequently a decree was filed dismissing the bill.

The reasons for that ruling are stated very clearly and forcibly in the court’s opinion, in which he says: ⁶⁹⁰ “The trouble with this description is there is no beginning point. FTeither are there any calls — such as to a tree; or a stone or a “cove. So that the whole description is based on the point of beginning. If there is no beginning point, there is no description.

And the first line of this property Tuns north from a fence surrounding a place known as Charles Wright’s.’ So that this northerly line could run from any point along this fence, no matter how long this fence might be. “Surely this is entirely too general, vague and indefinite. I hold, therefore, that the description in exhibit one, which is the contract, is really no description' at all, for as it begins nowhere it goes nowhere and describes nothing. “If the description had been such that a surveyor could have located, defined and described the land from it,. I would have permitted the surveyor to give in evidence the result of his survey. King v. Kaiser, 126 Md. 218 .” From this statement of the case it is apparent that the appellant’s right to relief depends upon two propositions: (1) That the contract executed by Mrs. Mladejovsky is sufficiently definite to enable the court to identify and locate definitely and conclusively the land to which it refers; and (2) that the testimony of the surveyor offered to show that the land described in the bill of complaint was the same land as that referred to in the contract should have been admitted.

One absolutely essential term in a contract for the sale of land, which must be shown before it can be specifically enforced, is a description of the land, either complete in itself, or which supplies data and information sufficient to enable the court with proper evidence to identify and locate the land definitely and with certainty. Upon that rule the courts are in substantial accord, but in applying it to specific cases there is no such concord. In Fry on Specific Performance, par. 342, the rule is stated in this language: “Every valid contract must contain a description of the subject matter; but it is not necessary that it should be so described as to admit of no doubt what ⁶⁹¹ it is; for the identity of the actual thing and the thing described may be shown by ‘extrinsic evidence.’ This flows from the very necessity of the case; for all actual things except the contract itself, being outside of and beyond the contract, the connection between the words expressing the contract and things outside it must be established other than by the contract itself, that is, by extrinsic evidence.” Plant v. Bourne, 2 Ch. D.

(1897), 285; Ogilvie v. Foljambe, 3 Mer. 53; Shardlow v. Cotterell, 20 Ch. D. 90. Another statement of the rule applicable in such a case is found in Ryan v. United States, 136 U. S. 68 , where the court quotes the following language from Eggleston v. Wagner, 46 Mich. 618 : “A further objection is that the proposal did not sufficiently describe the real estate to satisfy the Statute of Frauds. The general principle is not questioned.

The degree of certainty with which the premises must be denoted is defined in many books, and the cases are extremely numerous in which the subject has been illustrated. They are not all harmonious. But they agree in this, that it is not essential that the description have such particulars and tokens of identification as to render a resort to extrinsic aid