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100 N.C. 75

6 S.E 638

Ramsey v. Wallace

Supreme Court of North Carolina

Decided February 15, 1888

Supreme Court of North Carolina · decided 1888-02-15

Civil ACTION, tried before Connor, J., at February Term, 1888, of the Superior Court of Iredell County. . The complaint alleges that the plaintiff, desiring to purchase a lot in the town of Statesville, on which to erect a factory, with the necessary buildings, in which to carry on the business of manufacturing tobacco, and so informing the defendant, entered into a negotiation for the purchase of that hereinafter mentioned, for which the sum of $500 was demanded.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1888-02-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently December 1953

5 state decisions

2018881890190019101920193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Smith, C. J.,

¶1(after stating the case). We do not see any .just ground of complaint, which the plaintiffs can prefer; either in declining to charge the jury as requested, or in the ■statement of the law, in the directions given them by the Judge.

¶2What more favorable to the plaintiffs could be asked than an instruction, that, if the defendant David Wallace represented at the time of the sale, or pending the negotiation that looked to this end, “that the boundary of the lot” began as plaintiffs alleged, and that said representation was false, and that the defendant knew it to be false, or had no knowledge whether it was true or false, nor any reasonable grounds to believe it to be true, or had no honest or well grounded belief that it was true,” the verdict on the first issue should be in the affirmative ?

¶3And then followed the correlative proposition, in a negative form, upon which the finding should be for the defendant.

¶4The charge upon the second issue is equally free from objection.

¶5The cases collected by the industry and care of Mr. Batch-elor, of the rulings in this State, are so clear and decisive of the law, as to leave little to do, except to make reference to them. Tilghman v. West, 8 Ired. Eq., 183; Lytle v. Bird, 3 Jones, 222; Credle v. Swindell, 63 N. C., 305; Etheridge v. Vernoy, 70 N. C., 713; Etheridge v. Palin, 72 N. C., 213: Hill v. Brower, 76 N. C., 124; Knight v. Houghtalling, 85 N. C., 17; Cohen v. Stewart, 98 N. C., 97. Several of these cases go further, and require that the vendee shall not be culpably negligent, in cases where he ought to have informed himself of facts, and allege, that he relied upon the vendor’s representations

¶6*83In Etheridge v. Palin, supra,which related to a sale of personal property, the jury found, that the vendor’s representations were, in fact, untrue, and that the plaintiff relied upon them, and yet, as they were not embodied in the contract, it was held that the plaintiff could not recover, while the rule was admitted, that “ where a party affirmed, as a fact, a matter which turns out not to be true, it makes no difference whether he knows it to be untrue or not.”

¶7The complaint makes the necessary averments of false and fraudulent representations, as the inducement that brought about the contract, and the damage alleged to result from it.

¶8There was no inquiry as to the amount of the damages, and it is dispensed with by the verdict;- yet we notice that a sum is demanded twice the amount of the purchase money; so that, while a total failure of title in an action upon a warranty in the deed would only admit of a recovery of the purchase money and interest, the loss of a very narrow strip is to be compensated by a recovery of .double the purchase money, according to the plaintiff’s demand.

¶9There is no error, and the judgment is affirmed.

¶10No error. Affirmed.

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