Bastajian v. Brown

WOOD (W. J.), J. Plaintiff has appealed from a judgment whereby the trial court denied plaintiff’s petition for the cancellation of a conveyance of real estate and quieted title in defendants.

The action was tried on May 6, 1936. Upon the conclusion of the trial the court made a minute order by which judgment was ordered for defendants. Because of the illness and death of the chief counsel for defendants, proposed findings [912]were not seasonably delivered to the judge, and on May 11, 1937, counsel for plaintiff prepared findings. These findings and the accompanying judgment were signed and filed by the judge but upon motion of defendants the court on September 29, 1937, made an order vacating the findings and judgment and directing counsel for defendants to prepare findings. This order was made on the grounds that the findings prepared by counsel for plaintiff had been inadvertently signed and that deception had been practiced upon the court in inducing the acceptance of the findings. An appeal was taken from the order of September 20, 1937, resulting in the affirmance of the order upon the ground that the findings and judgment had been inadvertently filed. (Bastajian v. Brown, 19 Cal.2d 209 [120 P.2d 9].) Thereafter the court filed the findings and judgment from which the present appeal is prosecuted. After the trial of the action Mrs. Comstock, who had filed the complaint, died and the principal defendant, James E. Brown, also died. The administrators of their respective estates have been substituted as parties.

The complaint contains two causes of action. In her first cause of action Mrs. Comstock alleged that she was a woman “over 80” years of age and suffering from “the usual infirmities of mind and body attended by reaching said age ’ ’; that on December 2, 1931, the defendants James E. Brown and his wife, Margaret Brown, had “represented and stated to the plaintiff that it was necessary to sign some ‘papers’ in order to accomplish the payment-to her of a monthly income for the balance of her natural life and for the purpose of paying taxes on said property and that it was necessary for the plaintiff to sign a trust deed with respect to said property so as to accomplish said ends and that the defendants would pay the interest on said encumbrance and pay said encumbrance when the same became due and that her property would not be jeopardized thereby; . . that the plaintiff believed and relied upon these representations and signed a trust deed upon 40 acres of ranch land to secure payment of a note in the principal sum of $5,000 with interest at the rate of twelve per cent per annum; that the representations were false and untrue and made for the purpose of defrauding the plaintiff who received no consideration for signing the trust deed. It is further alleged in the first cause of action that “thereafter at various times the defendants presented to the plaintiff various papers and documents the content and purport of which is unknown to the plaintiff, but plaintiff has since ascertained that among such papers and documents there was a note and trust deed in the