Derr's Estate

Citations

• 203 Pa. 96
• 52 A. 27
• 1902 Pa. LEXIS 657

Syllabus

<p>Trusts q,nd trustees — Purchase of land for investment — Order of court— Estoppel — Laches.</p> <p>A person who is injured by fraud must be prompt in seeking redress. Laches and neglect are always discountenanced. Nothing can call a court of chancery into activity but conscience, good faith and reasonable diligence, and where these are wanting, the court is passive and does nothing. A court of equity does not encourage stale claims, and a party may lose his right to complain of a fraud by his delay.</p> <p>Where trustees under an order of the orphans’ court made after a reference to an examiner, and full investigation, purchase land as an investment for the trust estate, one of the cestuis que trust, who was fifteen years old at the time of the purchase, cannot, sixteen years thereafter, and after one of the trustees had been dead for nearly fourteen years, upon mere general charges of fraud in the matter of the sale, claim to have the sale set aside, and the trustees surcharged. In such a case it is no ground for setting aside the sale that one of the sellers chose to take in payment securities belonging to the trust estate instead of money; or that the land purchased was situated in another county than that in which the order was made.</p>