Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/864

 IN EE KING. 857 �transaction inter îJarfes. Ih îs not an application to set aside deeds tmder which any rights in possession passed. It is an application to annul deeds inadvertently given under the pretended authority of the court, and to which its sanc- tion was improperly obtained. �Without holding that the doctrine of laches has no appli- cation to such a case, it is clear that that principle can have far less force in such case than in a proceeding between ven-^ dor and vendee, where the vendee is put in possession under the deed afterwards assailed. In this case the misrepresen- tations by which the court was inducedto make the orders do not appear to have been discovered by Mr. Ogden in his life- time, nor by his executors, up to the time when they put in their answer in Chapman's suit, in September, 1878. The fact is adverted to by the respondent, Chapman, that these misrepresentations are not set out in the petitioners' answer in that suit. It is hardly conceivable that if the facts were then known to the executors they should not bave been set up in defence. As regards the other grounds of invalidity — the want of power in the court to make a second sale of the same property, or a gift — they are grounds not for deelaring voidable and avoiding the deeds, but for deelaring them to have been absolutely void and of no effect from the beginning, 80 that no rights whatever can have been acquired thereby through the acts of the vendee or the laches of any other party. The petitioners' testator was undoubtedly negligent in inquiring into the history and validity of these convey- ances. Under advice of counsel he seems to bave relied on his demurrer to the complaint as a sufBcient defence tni that was fînally disposed of in December, 1875; but there has been no loss of evidence by the death of any party who could tbrow light on the transaction. Waddell, Ford, and Hunt are ail liviiig, and bave not been called as witnesses. There seems to be no reason to doubt that the respondent eould have proved, if the fact were so, that a consideration was paid to the bankrupt estates for these conveyanees. He has not attempted to do so. As to the deeds to Hunt, he admits in his answer that he procured them to be made, and ����