Findlay v. Coyle

JAMISON, J., pro tem. This action is upon a rejected claim. The complaint contains two counts. The first is for services as a nurse and companion, and the second count is upon an agreement of the decedent to pay a mortgage in the sum of $5,500 assumed by plaintiff in the purchase of a home. The defendant answered, admitting the due appointment of defendant Angela J. Coyle as administratrix of the estate of deceased and denying the other allegations of the complaint. The case was tried by a jury, which returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff for the sum of $5,500. Thereupon the trial court rendered judgment for plaintiff in the said sum of $5,500. From this judgment defendant appeals.

Appellant contends that respondent’s testimony was insufficient to justify the verdict or to sustain the judgment because it was inconsistent with the contemporaneous written accounts of the decedent which were approved by respondent, accepted by her as correct, and thereby made her own. It is therefore necessary to review the evidence produced by respondent. Respondent was a widow, her husband having died in 1919. In 1920 she was living with her sister, Mrs. Frances Johnson, in San Francisco. The same year she became acquainted with the decedent, and in 1921 through the efforts of decedent she entered St. Mary’s Hospital as a nurse. Thereafter she purchased a small home. During all of this time she kept up her acquaintance with decedent. He was in poor health, had been separated from his family for a period of thirty-eight years and was anxious to secure a home for his declining years. He finally suggested to her that she buy a home on Anza Street. They went to the Anza Street place and looked it over. The purchase price of this property was $8,400, a mortgage for $5,500 [226]standing against it. Decedent told respondent that if she would purchase this property and trade her small home in on the deal he would pay off the $5,500 mortgage as soon as he sold certain property he owned in San Francisco. Upon this agreement respondent purchased the Anza Street home, trading in her own home for a part of the purchase price and assuming the $5,500 mortgage.

The decedent, Joseph A. Coyle, died in June, 1929. He was sixty-eight years of age at the time of his death, and for six or seven years previous to that time he had been in poor health. Respondent’s testimony regarding the decedent ’s agreement to pay off the said mortgage is corroborated by- the testimony of her sister, Mrs. Frances Johnson, and by that of Mrs. Mary B. Wulf, Mrs. Aileen Purcell, Mrs. Agnes Armstrong and Mrs. Mary A. Sheehan, all of whom testified that decedent told them he was going to pay off the said mortgage. The decedent sold his property in San Francisco in June, 1928, for $35,000, and after paying certain liens against the property he received the sum of $15,039.29, but he failed to pay off the said mortgage as he had agreed with respondent he would do. It appears from the evidence that during the three and a half years prior to his death he resided in the Anza Street property and made it his home. In the beginning of this residence he promised to pay respondent $100 per month for his board and lodging. This amount was subsequently reduced to $85 per month, and again reduced to $65 per month. Respondent never received any money at all from decedent, he paying all the expenses of the household himself.