Heller v. Dyerville Manufacturing Co.

Citations

• 116 Cal. 127
• 47 P. 1016
• 1897 Cal. LEXIS 522

Syllabus

<p>Injunction against Enforcement of Judgment—Fraud in Procurement—Stipulation—Modification— Insufficient Complaint—Construction against Pleader.—A complaint in an action brought more than six months after the entry of judgment in a former action, to enjoin its enforcement, as having been procured by fraud in violation of a stipulation for judgment pursuant to the prayer of the complaint in the former action, and to secure the modification of such judgment so as to conform to the stipulation, is to be construed most strongly against the pleader, and does not state a sufficient case of fraud in the procurement of the judgment, where it merely alleges in general terms that the attorney for the plaintiff in the former action “for the purpose of cheating and defrauding” the defendants therein, who are plaintiffs in the new action, presented to the judge a decree prepared by said attorney, which he represented to be in accordance with the stipulation, whereby the plaintiff in the former action obtained relief not warranted by the complaint nor by the stipulation, and that the judge relied upon such representation and signed the decree, but does not allege specifio facts to point the general assertions of fraud, nor that the representation of the attorney to the judge was made with intent to deceive, nor that the attorney then did not know or believe it to be true, and shows that the decree recited the substantial part of the stipulation on file, and that the judge had the same means of knowing the truth of the representation as the attorney, and does not negative the presumption that the judge read over and examined the stipulation before signing the decree, nor show that knowledge of the decree was intentionally concealed from the defendants in the former action, whose duty it was to keep track or the case; nor that such knowledge was prevented by any act of the plain, tiff in that action, but states facts showing complainants’ actual know!» edge of the decree within si