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65 Miss. 332

Roberts v. Kimmons

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided October 15, 1887

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1887-10-15

Hon. W. S. Featherston, Judge. Charles Roberts employed J. H. Kimmons to sell a certain tract of land in Coahoma .County, upon an agreement, as the latter says, that Roberts should pay him a commission of “ 2],-per cent, on amount of price of land; ” but Roberts says he agreed to pay Kimmons “ 2J per cent, commission on the amount the place sold for.” Roberts gave Kimmons a letter of introduction to one Eldridge, suggesting at the time that he would probably be able to sell…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1887-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently January 1945

11 state decisions

401887189019001910192019301940decided

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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Arnobd, J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the Court.

¶2The right result was reached in this case, and there is no error in the record for which the judgment should be reversed.

¶3The sale negotiated by appellee failed not because of the inability of the purchaser to comply with its terms, but on account of a defect in the title to the land. We are not fully informed by the record of the extent of the alleged defect in the title, but enough appears to show that'the objection made to it by the purchaser was not fanciful or captious.

¶4The condition in the written contract in regard to the title being made clear and satisfactory to the purchaser, before the sale was to be concluded, was nothing more than the law and good faith implied, to wit, that the purchaser should get a title free from valid objections. Folliard v. Wallace, 2 Johnston, 395; Middleton v. Findla, 25 Cal., 76. The purchaser would have been entitled to this without any such stipulation in the contract, unless it had been shown that he agreed to take the risk of the title.

¶5The right of appellee to commissions did not depend upon •the contingency of the title being good. He assumed no responsibility in regard to the title. When one representing that he owns and has good title to real estate, employs an agent to sell it, he cannot, in the absence of an agreement to that effect, deny to the agent compensation for his services in making a .sale, which is afterwards defeated because the title proved de*335fective. Middleton v. Findla, 25 Cal., 76; Knapp v. Wallace, 41 N. Y., 477 ; Doty v. Miller, 43 Barb., 529 ; Holly v. Gosling, 3 E. D. Smith, 262; Hamlin v. Schulte, 34 Minn., 534; Kock v. Emmerling, 22 How., 69; Sibbald v. Bethlehem Iron Co., 83 N. Y., 378.

¶6Affirmed.

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