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34 Mo. 277

Huffman v. Ackley

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided October 15, 1863

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1863-10-15

Charles Circuit Court. Plaintiff sued for $140, which he alleged was the amount of his undivided interest in a tract of 140 acres, which he bad sold to defendant. Defendant denied the purchase and sale. At the trial it appeared that George Huffman, Sr., died seized of the land, leaving eleven heirs, among whom were plaintiff, defendant’s wife, George Huffman, Isaac Huffman, and others.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1863-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently April 1933

5 state decisions

1018631870188018901900191019201930decided

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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Bates, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The instruction given for the plaintiff was erroneous, in that it did not require as a condition of the plaintiff’s recovery, that the plaintiff’s alleged interest in the tract of land should have been conveyed to the defendant. The pe*280tition stated that the plaintiff’s interest (which was stated to be an undivided fourth of the whole) was conveyed to the defendant by George Huffman. This conveyance was the alleged consideration of the debt of the defendant to the plaintiff, and its proof was a necessary precedent to a recovery by the plaintiff, yet the instruction authorizes a recovery, if he has obtained title to the land by means of an independent purchase from George Huffman. The importance of this omission appears from an examination of the testimony, which shows that the defendant bought the whole estate in a specified portion of the land, and not an undivided fourth of the whole tract, from George Huffman ; but that no connection of the plaintiff with that purchase is shown at all, and no conveyance or intention to convey any interest of the plaintiff in the land is shown by testimony.

¶3The instructions asked by the defendant were properly refused. The first and third were mere abstract propositions of law, upon which we give no opinion. Instructions should be so framed as to apply directly to the whole case, properly made in evidence under the pleadings.

¶4The second should have stated an hypothetical case. The fourth assumed that a parol promise by George Pluffman would be absolutely void, whereas it was optional with him to avail himself of the statute of frauds or not.

¶5We give no opinion whether the statute of frauds may be pleaded in this case or not.

¶6Judgment reversed and cause remanded.

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