Griffeth & Dalzel v. Brown

McFarland, J. This is an action to recover five hundred sacks of wheat, or the value thereof. The verdict and judgment were for plaintiffs, and defendant appealed.

The action arose out of those prolific sources of litigation,—leases of agricultural land, cropping contracts, and mortgages of growing crops.

About the 1st of November, 1883, the defendant Brown, being the owner of a certain tract of land, made a verbal contract (the terms of which are in dispute) about said land with one Manuel Smith. Under this contract (whatever it was) Smith cultivated the land and put in a crop of wheat. On February 19, 1884, [261]Smith mortgaged his growing crop to plaintiffs to secure future advances. Under the terms of the mortgage plaintiffs were authorized to take possession of the grain and harvest, thrash and sack it, which they did. They gave defendant one fourth of the grain, and piled the other three fourths in one corner of the premises, from which defendant took the five hundred sacks sued for, claiming it to be his property.

Plaintiffs’ theory (supported by some evidence) was, that the verbal contract between Brown and Smith, made in November, 1883, was simply a lease,—Smith to pay as rent one fourth of the crop, and the stubble and straw to go also to Brown. But Brown introduced a written instrument signed by himself and Smith, dated November 3, 1883, but shown to have been executed after plaintiff’s mortgage, which was a cropping contract, by the terms of which Brown was to be and remain the owner of all the wheat raised, not only until Smith should have delivered him one fourth of the wheat raised, but until he should have delivered to him also an additional amount of the wheat sufficient to pay, at market price, the sum of $576.22, and interest, which Smith owed him for certain horses and farming implements. And defendant’s theory (supported also by some evidence) was, that the written cropping contract was the same as the original verbal contract made in November, 1883, and was a mere reduction of the latter to writing. So that the jury may have found in favor of either party as to the real character of the original verbal contract.

But plaintiffs also introduced evidence tending to show that when Smith came to them for advances they went to defendant Brown and inquired of him what the contract was between him and Smith, and told him that Smith wanted them to make him advances; and that Brown said, as Smith had before told them, that he (Brown) was to receive one fourth of the wheat, and the