Ridgway v. Ridgway

Robinson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Before considering the facts, it may be as well to say a word about the law applicable to this case. The bill is filed by a son against his father to enforce the execution of a verbal agreement, alleged to have been made fifteen years ago for the-sale of a farm. To excejit this agreement from the operation of the Statute of Frauds, which requires all contracts for the sale of land to be reduced to writing, the plaintiff relies on the performance by him of his part of the contract.

Courts of equity will, it is true, decree the execution of a verbal agreement for the sale of land, where there has been a part performance by one of the parties. The ground on which equity proceeds in such cases is that it would be a fraud to permit the other party, to interpose, the Statute as a bar to the execution of an agreement thus partly performed. In other words, Courts will not permit a statute passed for the purpose of preventing-frauds, to be used as an instrument for perpetrating a fraud. There- is a tendency, however, of late to a stricter construction of the Statute, and an indispostion to except cases from its operation beyond well settled decisions.

There is a great deal of force in what Lord Redesdale said in Lindsay vs. Lynch, 2 Sch. & Lef., 4: “The Statute was made for the purpose of preventing frauds and perjuries, and nothing can be more manifest to any person who has been in the habit of practising in Courts of equity, than that the relaxation of that Statute has been the ground of much perjury and ²⁴⁵ nmcli fraud. If tlie Statute had been rigorously observed, the resxilt would probably have been that fewer instances of parol agreements would have occurred; agreements would from the necessity of the case, have been reduced to writing.” Forster vs. Hale, 3 Ves., 712. Rut be this as it may, all agree that to entitle one to the specific performance of a verbal agreement for the sale of land, there must be not only clear, definite, and satisfactory proof of the agreement, but also that the acts of part performance relied on, were done in pursuance of it. Spear vs. Orendorf, 26 Md., 44 ; Rosenthal vs. Freeburger, 26 Md., 80 .

Now the trouble in.this case is, that the proof both in regard to the agreement itself, and the acts of performance under it is conflicting and contradictory. On the part of the plaintiff the proof rests mainly on his own testimony, and that of his wife. And what is it? His lather, he says, had a life estate in a lot of ground in Washington, the plaintiff and his brother and sisters, being entitled to the remainder; and his father being anxious to sell the lot in fee, agreed to give him the farm in controversy, provided he would join in the deed to the purchaser, and upon the faith of this agreement he united in the deed.

That afterwards he went to Washington where his father lived to get a deed of the farm, and his father said “it was all right,” but afterwards he said he had changed his mind, and refused to execute the deed. The wife says her father-in-law, the defendant, persuaded her to use her influence with her husband to get him to sign the deed of the Washington lot, and promised he would give the farm to her husband if he would sign the deed, and after he signed it, the defendant said, her husband should have it. Then Mrs. Ecldoff, the plaintiff’s sister, testifies her lather paid to her, and to each of her two sisters, five ²⁴⁶ hundred dollars as a, consideration for