Wilson v. Moriarty

Foote, C. This action was instituted for the purpose of having a certain contract of lease rescinded. The defendant demurred to the complaint filed, upon the grounds,—1. That it did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action; 2. That it was ambiguous, unintelligible, and uncertain in various particulars.

The demurrer was sustained, and the plaintiff declining to amend her complaint, judgment passed for the defendant, from which an appeal was taken.

The facts stated in the complaint are, as it appears to us, different from those set up in the case of Hawkins v. Hawkins, 50 Cal. 558, the decision in which is relied on by the respondent here. In that case there was no allegation that the plaintiff was a person of weak mind, or that the consideration for the making of the contract was inadequate. It seems to have been a case where the party, deceived as to the terms of the contract he apparently assented to, was simply an unlettered and illiterate person, of ordinarily sound intellect, we must [598]suppose, who, by his own carelessness, had allowed himself to be entrapped, and where the defendant occupied no trust relation.

In the present case “an illiterate and ignorant woman of weak understanding, unable to read or write, and ignorant of business, and unable to fix her attention upon or to understand the effect of legal documents when read to her,” declares that the defendant was a man of more than ordinary capacity, a “shrewd merchant and business man of very plausible manners and address,” and during all the period of time referred to in the complaint, on “terms of intimate friendship with the plaintiff and her husband, who was a person ignorant of business, illiterate, and of no business capacity”; that during all that time the defendant had and exercised a great influence over her and her husband; that before the lease sought to be canceled was executed,, the defendant had endeavored, -without success, to induce the plaintiff to sell him the property mentioned in the complaint; that “thereupon the defendant conceived the intent to defraud and cheat the plaintiff out of said property under the disguise of a long lease, for a rental far below the rental value of said property, and in pursuance of said fraudulent intent, did importune” the said husband of plaintiff “ to procure for the defendant a five years’ lease of said property, and finally, by such importunity,” induced her husband to consent thereto, the said husband then agreeing that he would “procure the plaintiff to give the defendant such a lease for a term of five years only, on the following terms: For a monthly rental of $150 per month, the plaintiff to put an iron front to the lower story of the building on said premises, which building was of two stories.”