Avila v. Pereira

Citations

• 120 Cal. 589
• 52 P. 840
• 1898 Cal. LEXIS 814

Syllabus

<p>Preferred Right to Purchase Railroad Lands—Trust—Administrator’s Sale—Ejectment—Evidence.—In an action of ejectment between claimants under the Central Pacific Railroad Company of lands included within its grant, where it appears that the rules and customs of the railroad company gave a preferred right of purchase to settlers upon the land, and that plaintiff made a contract to purchase the land in controversy with full knowledge that defendant was in possession of the land and of improvements thereon, and that defendant claimed under an administrator’s sale- of the rights of a deceased settler upon the land, and also under a prior application to purchase the land made by the administrator in his own name, but for the benefit of the estate, and after he had inventoried it as a part of the estate, such administrator is to' be regarded as holding the interest applied for as a trustee in trust for the estate, and the defendant by his purchase succeeded to whatever interest was acquired by ■ the administrator and by the estate, and the plaintiff acquired no superior rights as against the defendant; and it was not error to admit in evidence the probate proceedings through which the defendant claimed the right of possession as against the plaintiff.</p> <p>In.—Inchoate Title—Value to be Fixed—Protection of Occupant.— ' Where the application for the land made by the administrator and the certificate of the land agent, appended thereto, showed that the title of the railroad company was then inchoate, and that the value of the land was to be thereafter fixed', but that the railroad company ' 1 would not take into account the value of any improvements made by the occupant in fixing the value, etc., the contract looked td a period in the future when the company would fix the price and notify the applicant, and the company could not take away the rights existing under the contract, without first notifying the occupant holding under the contract, and giving such person an opt