Earhart v. Churchill Co.

MELVIN, J.

On May 29, 1909, a complaint was filed in which the plaintiffs attempted to allege two causes of action one to quiet title to certain property in Siskiyou County, and the other based upon the asserted fraud of one Jerome Churchill as one of the administrators of the estate of Charles B. Boyes, deceased, in conducting a sale of the property involved to one Renner, who by a previous arrangement with said Churchill conveyed the land to him and to the Siskiyou County Bank. The sale was made after order of court in that behalf and the amount obtained was the exact sum necessary to cancel a mortgage on the property in which Jerome Churchill and the Siskiyou County Bank were the mortgagees. The date of said sale was December 21, 1895. It was alleged that before the death of said Churchill in 1908 he acquired the bank’s title to the property and conveyed it to the Churchill Company, a family corporation of which he was a member. A demurrer to the second cause of. action was sustained September 21, 1912, and on October 7th of

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that year a “First Amended Complaint” was filed, seeking to set up a cause of action based upon the alleged fraud. A demurrer to this complaint was sustained and plaintiffs failing to amend their pleading, judgment was entered against them.

It was alleged in the first amended complaint that Jerome Churchill was at the time of his death in 1908 an administrator of the estate of Charles B. Boyes, deceased, and that he had never been discharged from the office of guardian of the minor heirs of said Boyes, to which he had been regularly appointed. It was also averred that no final accounting had ever been made in either the guardianship proceeding or the estate of Charles B. Boyes.

The probate sale was made at public auction and was confirmed by the court on January 11, 1896. The alleged fraud of Churchill was “that for the purpose of shutting out competition in bidding at said sale, and for the purpose of preventing other bids' being made at said sale, other than his own,” he caused the sale to be called at “about the hour of 9 o’clock” of December 21, 1895. It had been advertised to take place at 10 o’clock, and “by reason of no competitive bids the sum for which said premises were bid in was far below the real and true value thereof.”