Dillon v. Hegarty

Citations

• 222 Pa. 166
• 70 A. 998
• 1908 Pa. LEXIS 672

Syllabus

<p>Equity — Equity practice — Equity jurisdiction — Amendment—Defective prayer — Obligation for payment of money — Cloud on title — Deed—Insufficient description.</p> <p>Where the averments of a bill in equity together with a paper purporting to be a deed attached to the bill, show that the real purpose of the bill was to remove a cloud on title, and the averments of the answer also disclose that this was the purpose, but the prayer of the bill asks only that the instrument in question be declared a simple obligation for the payment of money, the court may after the closing of the evidence permit the plaintiff to substitute a prayer that the instrument be declared null and void, and stricken from the record as a cloud upon plaintiff’s title. Such an amendment includes no new cause of action, and cannot prejudice the defendant; and this is especially so if the court gives him opportunity to offer additional evidence, and even proposes a continuance for such a purpose.</p> <p>A court of equity will declare null and void, and strike from the record as cloud upon title, a paper purporting to be a deed of conveyance of fifty acres of mineral lands, where the instrument contains no description whatever of the fifty acres, except that it was a part of a tract four times as great.</p>