Bickel v. Munger

JAMES, J.

Appeal from a judgment entered in favor of plaintiff and from an order denying the motion of defendants for a new trial.

This action was brought to enforce rescission of an agreement for the exchange of real properties. Defendants Hunger were the owners of a ranch which was located near Baldwin Park in the county of Los Angeles, and plaintiff was the owner of a lot located in the city of Los Angeles upon which was erected a building containing several flats. Plaintiff’s attention was attracted by an advertisement inserted by a real estate broker which represented defendants’ property to consist of fifteen acres, highly improved with buildings, tankhouse, windmill, grove of five acres full-bearing oranges of the finest varieties, together with lemons, peaches, apricots, and other fruits, which would net, with proper care, four thousand dollars per year. Negotiations were entered into through the agent which resulted in the exchange of the properties being made. Prior to the conclusion of the deal plaintiff visited the ranch of defendants with her two sons, a daughter and son-in-law, and was shown over it by defendant E. M. Hunger. In her complaint it was alleged, and the court found the facts to be, that defendants for the purpose of influencing and inducing plaintiff to make the exchange of

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properties represented to plaintiff that the fifteen-acre ranch was highly improved; that five acres thereof was in young orange trees of the finest varieties in full bearing; that ten acres thereof was in assorted table grapes, six or seven years old; that the vineyard would yield from fifteen to twenty tons of grapes to the acre, and that the grapes would bring about twenty dollars per ton; that a packing house in the neighborhood would pick and haul the grapes and plaintiff would have nothing to do in marketing the grapes, except to count the boxes as they were hauled away; that the orange trees had produced four hundred and fifty boxes of oranges during the year 1908; that the soil was nice sandy loam, all similar to that shown to plaintiff; that the ranch was worth more than one thousand dollars an acre and was a bargain at fifteen thousand dollars; that it was a very profitable place and would net four thousand dollars a year on the investment; that there was a good pumping plant on the ranch for which the defendants Hunger had paid two thousand five hundred dollars. These representations the court found to be untrue, and particularly that the Hunger property was not at the time of the exchange, nor at any other time, worth more than seven thousand five hundred dollars; that the orange trees were not young trees, nor of the finest varieties; that a large part of the orange trees mentioned were seedlings and the balance were trees budded to the old stumps of a lemon orchard which had been cut down nearly level with the ground and earth heaped around the base of each tree so as to hide the,stumps from view, and that the trees were budded in the year 1900 or 1901, and many of them subsequently re-budded; that the vineyard had never produced crops in a quantity which would nearly equal the quantity that Hunger represented the vineyard would produce, and that the vineyard could not, on account of the nature of the soil, produce the quantity of grapes represented; that there was no grape packing house in the neighborhood of the ranch or anywhere in that vicinity; that the orange trees were not in full bearing, and that in the year 1908 they produced less than two hundred boxes of oranges; that the soil of the larger part of the ranch was inferior to that shown to plaintiff; that a wash, or old river bed, ran diagonally through the rear part of the ranch and constituted a large portion of the ranch;