Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

33 Minn. 341

Scott v. Reed

Supreme Court of Minnesota

Decided May 8, 1885

Supreme Court of Minnesota · decided 1885-05-08

The allegations of the complaint in this action are substantially as follows, viz.: On November 1, 1879, one Samuel S. Small was the owner of a certain lot in Minneapolis, and conveyed it by warranty deed, his wife joining therein, to one S. J. Wooster, which warranty deed has never been recorded.

Relies on Robinson v. Boyd

Cited in Bouvier (1914)’s definition of “Peace Of God”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1885-05-08

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently March 1929

5 state decisions

2018851890190019101920decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Mitchell, J.1

¶1If one take or procure a conveyance of property, knowing at the time that the title is in another, though unrecorded, derived from the party with whom he treats, it is a fraud in him to take advantage of the want of registry to defeat the outstanding title by taking a conveyance to himself or to a third party. And if he subsequently conveys the property, or causes it to be conveyed, to an innocent purchaser for value whose conveyance is protected by registration, he will be liable in damages for the value of the property to the grantee in the unrecorded deed, because by such fraudulent acts the latter has been deprived of property which was rightfully his. Le Neve v. Le Neve, 1 Ves. Sr. 64; Ludlow v. Kid, 4 Ohio, 244; Robinson v. Boyd, 17 Mich. 128. These elementary propositions are decisive that the complaint in this action stated a cause of action, and ought not to have been dismissed. There is no force in the suggestion that Wooster, the immediate grantee in the unrecorded deed, and not plaintiff, was the party injured. Plaintiff had succeeded to the rights of Wooster by purchase of the premises at a foreclosure sale under a mortgage executed by the latter. Neither is it impor*343tant that the complaint does not allege that plaintiff- knew of the unrecorded deed when he purchased. The fact remains that he was deprived of property, lawfully his, by the fraud of defendant.

¶2Judgment reversed, and new trial ordered.

¶3 Berry, J., was absent and took no part in this case.

/33/minn/341 · .json · Public domain