Hanrick v. Neely/Opinion of the Court

It may be true that the deed which the court below rejected was executed because of the decree made by the District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, and that it would not have been made if the decree had not been rendered, but it does not follow that the decree was necessary to its validity. The fee of the lands was in Zarsa, and the power of Williamson, his attorney in fact, to sell and convey them to Hanrick, was plenary, and did not require, to be employed, that a court of justice should act on it. If Williamson was stimulated by the decree to exercise the power thus vested in him by Zarsa, what right have the defendants to question his action or complain of it? They are not concerned with the reasons that induced him to act, nor with the nature or result of the litigation with Hanrick. All that they are interested to know is, that Zarsa had title to the lands, that he authorized Williamson to sell, and that the conveyance to Hanrick was in due form of law. The decision by this court in Games v. Stiles is a direct authority against the position taken by the court below. In that case, Buchanan, the purchaser from the United States of lands in Ohio, sold them to Sterling, but recited in his deed, that the conveyance was made in pursuance of a decree of the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Virginia. The court held that it was not necessary to prove the decree to sustain the deed; that as Buchanan was the patentee of the land, although he made the deed under the authority of the decree, yet the deed was good without the decree, which could add nothing to its validity. If anything, the case at bar is stronger than the case just cited, because Zarsa does not recite in the body of the deed that the conveyance is made in consequence of the decree, and we only learn the fact that it was so, by an indorsement on the back of the deed.

One other point remains to be noticed. It seems that the court based its rejection of the deed also on the ground that it was delivered by the clerk to Hanrick in obedience to the decree of the court, and that therefore proof of the decree was necessary to support the delivery. But the deed was not complete without delivery, and the decree of the court was no more essential to give validity to the delivery than it was to any other formality necessary to the full execution of the instrument. Williamson authorized the delivery, and has acquiesced in it, and no one else can object to the mode by which the act was accomplished. All that the defendants are interested in, is the fact of delivery, and about this there is no dispute. They are no more concerned with the considerations that induced Williamson to deliver the deed to Hanrick, through the clerk of the court, than they are with the motives that prompted him to affix his signature and seal to the instrument.

Apart from this, Hanrick, the grantee, being in possession of the deed, which upon the face of it is regularly executed, and, having had it recorded, the presumption is that it was duly delivered. #fn-s-s * *

It is, therefore, clear that the Circuit Court erred in rejecting the deed, and on that account its judgment is

REVERSED AND A VENIRE DE NOVO AWARDED.