Coolidge v. Austin

LENNON, P. J.

The plaintiff in this action of claim and delivery secured a judgment, awarding her the possession or the value of certain personal property. The plaintiff’s complaint contained all of the allegations usual and necessary to the statement of a cause of action in claim and delivery. The defendant by his answer denied all of the allegations of the complaint and in addition averred that he had acquired title to and possession of the property in suit by purchase in good faith for a valuable consideration from one W. H. Coolidge. Defendant further averred that he made such purchase without knowledge or notice of the fact that plaintiff had or claimed any title or interest in the property.

The trial court found that the property in controversy was valued at the sum of six hundred and ninety dollars, and that plaintiff was at all times the owner and entitled to the possession thereof.

These findings are sufficiently supported by the evidence upon the whole case.

The facts of the case are practically undisputed and briefly are as follows: The plaintiff and William H. Coolidge prior to the sale in question were husband and wife. Plaintiff purchased the property in suit prior to her marriage and paid for it out of her separate funds. The property consisted of a house-boat and its furnishings, and after said marriage were used and occupied by plaintiff and her husband in keeping house. Some time prior to the sale of the property to the defendant plaintiff quarreled with her husband, and she then separated from him and left him in the sole possession of the property. While in such possession plaintiff’s husband, without her knowledge or consent, sold the property to the defendant for the sum of six hundred and ninety dollars. It is an admitted fact in the case that the plaintiff prior to the sale

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of the property instituted a' suit for divorce against her husband, and that in the verified complaint in that action she alleged that the property in controversy 'here was community property.

Upon behalf of the defendant it is contended that the fact that the plaintiff had alleged under oath in the divorce action that the property in controversy was community property estopped her from claiming title as against the defendant in this action, and that the trial court should have so found.