Stanton v. Freeman

JAMES, J.

Action brought by plaintiffs to quiet title to certain lots of land in the townsite of Inglewood, in Los Angeles county. Judgment was in favor of defendants, and plaintiffs have appealed from an order denying a motion made by them for a new trial.

Prior to November, 1902, plaintiffs, as real estate agents and brokers, had been employed by defendant Freeman and his wife to negotiate the sale of property owned by said defendants at Inglewood. Some property had been sold under that agency and in November, 1902, there was pending a sale of a large amount of said property under negotiations made by

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plaintiffs with parties representing the Inglewood Water Company. Defendant Archibald C. Freeman visited the office of plaintiffs one day while such negotiations were under way and there, at the suggestion of plaintiff Van Alstyne, made a deed, which was signed and duly acknowledged by himself and wife and purported to convey to plaintiffs-title to the property in question in this action. This deed was placed among the papers of plaintiffs at their office, and two weeks later Freeman called and asked to examine it. It had never been recorded and Van Alstyne procured it from his files and handed it to Freeman. Freeman made some statement to the general effect that he wanted to check up the lines and took the deed away and refused to return it. There were some negotiations between counsel for Freeman and plaintiffs following in which Freeman’s attorney endeavored to secure the consent of plaintiffs to have the deed placed in escrow along with other papers pertaining to the transfer of the property about which negotiations had been had, as before mentioned, but to this course plaintiffs refused to assent and the deed was left in the possession of Freeman’s attorney. A controversy had arisen between plaintiffs and Freeman because it was claimed by Freeman that he had not been dealt fairly with by plaintiffs, his agents, in connection with the proposed pending sale of real estate, in that the agents, without his knowledge, proposed to secure for their own benefit a price in excess of that which they represented to Freeman as being the consideration for the proposed sale. Freeman took up the negotiations from this point on his own behalf and refused to recognize plaintiffs further in the matter, and completed the sale to the same parties, but upon different terms and conditions. Plaintiffs subsequently brought an action against Freeman to recover for alleged commissions earned on account of the sale of the latter’s property, and in that action they were defeated, the court finding that they did not complete the sale of the property and were not entitled to any commission. Subsequently, Freeman transferred the property described in plaintiffs’ complaint by deed to the Inglewood Water Company, and it in turn sold some of it to defendant Lloyd. Plaintiffs never obtained possession of any of the lots described in their deed, and rents were collected and taxes paid by Freeman and his subsequent grantees continuously down to the time that this