United Finance Corp. v. Elaine Realty Co.

Offutt, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The Elaine Realty Company, a corporation, on May 1st, 1936, executed a written contract under which it bargained and sold to the United Finance Corporation a lot of ground approximately four hundred and fifteen feet long by one hundred and fifty-six feet wide, bounded by Baltimore, Ellamont and Elbert Streets, and Bernice Avenue, in Baltimore City, and agreed upon payment of the purchase price to convey the lot so sold to the vendee by “a good and merchantable title.” The vendee failed to pay the purchase price or to con- ' summate the sale, and on September 26th, 1936, the vendor filed the bill in this case against the vendee, in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City, to compel it to specifically perform that contract. In its answer, the vendee, by way of defense, alleged that the vendor was not able to convey to it a good and merchantable title because, it said, a part of said lot lay in the 'beds of Tenth Street West, and Baltimore Street, and a part of those streets was dedicated to public use. ¹⁵¹ In the course of the proceedings Edward V. Cdonan and Helen B. Coonan intervened as defendants, asserted that they owned land abutting on that portion of the way called Baltimore Street (which for a part of its width is now called Elbert Street), that Baltimore Street was dedicated to the use of the public for its entire width, that they owned the fee in the northern half of that part of it on which their property abutted, and that they were entitled to the use of it for its entire width as a public street.