Lee v. Folcey

NOURSE, P. J.

Plaintiffs sued for the cancellation of a number of separate written instruments conveying separate pieces of realty and for an accounting of the rents, issues and profits of such realty. Demurrers to the fifth amended complaint were sustained without leave to amend, but the trial court granted plaintiffs leave to move to amend if a proposed amendment was presented with the motion. This was done and the trial court again denied leave to amend and entered judgment for the defendants. The plaintiffs appeal upon a typewritten clerk’s transcript which contains the fifth amended complaint and the proposed amendment.

In the fifth amended complaint it is alleged that the plaintiffs were owners of several distinct pieces of real property situated in Los Angeles and Imperial Counties; that on July 22, 1922, the defendants conspired for the purpose of defrauding plaintiffs out of said properties and that, as a part of said conspiracy, induced, plaintiffs to enter into a contract with defendants Hesse and wife for the construction of an apartment house building on one of said lots located in the Crown Hill tract in the city of Los Angeles; that, as a part of said conspiracy, the plaintiffs were induced to execute and deliver to the Hesses two promissory notes amounting to $50,000 secured by mortgages on said Crown Hill lot; that the Hesses fraudulently delayed the

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completion of said building for a period of more than fourteen months and transferred to other of the defendants the two notes and mortgages; that these latter defendants then threatened to foreclose said mortgages unless the plaintiffs should convey to them other real property which was done; that thereafter the defendant Folcey and wife came into the transaction, telling the plaintiffs that the other defendants were all crooks and were conspiring to defraud them of their properties but that, if the plaintiffs would transfer to them other properties owned by them, they, these defendants, would clear the mortgages mentioned and save all these properties to the plaintiffs. All these acts were alleged to have been taken with the knowledge and connivance of all the defendants as part of a general conspiracy to defraud the plaintiffs. As a result of these transactions it was alleged that the plaintiffs lost to the defendants all their real property valued at $60,000. The prayer was for a cancellation of all the written instruments, a reconveyance of these properties, and for an accounting.