Greene v. Locke-Paddon Company

KERRIGAN, J.

This is an appeal by defendants in an action brought by the plaintiff to rescind a contract of purchase of real property on the ground of fraudulent misrepresentations.

At and prior to the month of January, 1913, the LockePaddon Company was a corporation engaged in the real estate business in Alameda, Solano, and other counties. During that month, according to the findings of the trial court, the Locke-Paddon Company, through one of its agents, fraudulently induced the plaintiff to purchase the land described in the complaint. This finding being conclusive here, we are

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at once led to a consideration of the main point in the case, namely, whether the plaintiff’s right of action was barred by laches.

As before stated, plaintiff and the Locke-Paddon Company entered into a contract for the sale and purchase of certain land in the month of January, 1913. Notice of rescission of this contract was given by the plaintiff in September, 1914, one year and eight months after the execution of the contract, during which time the plaintiff was in possession of the land. A consideration of the evidence in this case constrains us to hold that the plaintiff’s right of rescission was barred by his laches.

According to his own testimony, within two months after the purchase his brother, who investigated the land for him at his request, reported that he had purchased “a gravel-pit.” About the time of this report by his brother the plaintiff learned from a man with whom he had agreed to farm the land in question on shares (it having been purchased as agricultural land of good quality) that it was too hard to cultivate, and that he had “plowed around it once and had to give it up.” Although plaintiff was an experienced farmer and familiar with the occurrence of hard pan in soil, still he made no inquiries concerning the reason of the failure of his associate to proceed with the cultivation of the land, concluding, he stated, that following a dry winter the land was too hard to plow. The next rainy season having arrived, the plaintiff succeeded in effecting an arrangement to have the land farmed on shares, but the result was unsatisfactory, the crop taken off of the thirteen acres being but one ton of hay and sixteen sacks of barley. In June of 1914 the plaintiff for the first time personally examined the land, although he lived within less than half a day’s journey of it by railroad, which he could have taken at an expense of three dollars. In the following month the plaintiff wrote to LockePaddon Company, asking that company to sell the land for him for one thousand dollars, and saying that he was not in a position to live on the land and work it himself, and that he was therefore willing to incur the loss which he would sustain by selling it at that price, provided a quick sale could be made. No sale of the land having been effected under this invitation, he caused a further examination of it to be made; and then learning, as he stated, that the land was worth but $50, and