Vogelsang v. Wolpert

CONLEY, P. J.

The Vogelsangs obtained a judgment against Eugene B. Wolpert and his family corporation, Oxford Investment Company, for $55,806.10, $12,250.84 interest, and $5,000 punitive damages in a fraud action involving the transfer by the Vogelsangs to the defendants of virtually all of their extensive real and personal property.

The trial court found that the plaintiffs were induced to turn over to defendants for an allegedly grossly inadequate consideration their property, consisting of 360 acres of improved farm land near Latón, a dairy herd of 259 cows besides bulls and calves, a complete dairy, farm machinery and

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equipment, including two pick-up trucks, four tractors, a 2,200-gallon bulk milk tank, a hay bailer, a hay chopper, four wagons and trailers, hay moving equipment, and other items, a grade A milk producers contract with Knudsen Creamery Company, approximately 1,200 tons of silage, repair and shop tools, together with agricultural parts and farm supplies, irrigation pipe lines and sprinkling equipment, and irrigation accessories sufficient to water plaintiffs ’ real properties, the sum of $14,950 in cash payable to some of plaintiffs at Visalia Branch of Security Title Insurance Company, from the sale of real property, an 80-acre cotton allotment pertaining to plaintiffs’ real properties, other miscellaneous personal properties necessary to conduct a dairy and farming business, and the equity in a house and lot with furnishings and equipment at Pismo Beach in San Luis Obispo County. The court further expressly found that these transfers were induced by “false, fraudulent, and deceitful acts, promises and misrepresentations of defendants,” and that each “promise and misrepresentation of defendants set forth ... constitutes acts, promises and misrepresentations of material facts by said defendants,” that such promises were made without any intention to perform on the part of defendants but solely to induce plaintiffs to transfer their properties to defendants, that all of the misrepresentations were known by the defendants to be false and fraudulent, that the defendants intended that plaintiffs should rely and act upon these deceitful and untrue representations, that plaintiffs did so rely, and that plaintiffs sustained actual damages. The trial court was of the opinion that “. . . the alleged fraud although shrouded in an apparent veil of strict legality was gross.”