Magaw v. Huntley

Citations

• 36 App. D.C. 26
• 1910 U.S. App. LEXIS 5945

Syllabus

<p>Evidence; Equity> Amendment; Deeds; Undue Influence; Fraud; Presumptions.</p> <p>1. While the testimony of physicians as to the mental incompetency of the grantor in a deed attacked by an heir at law of the grantor as having been procured by the exercise of undue influence may be relevant as showing a condition of mind of the grantor rendering the grantor susceptible of being influenced, if there is any evidence tending to support the charge of undue influence, it is irrevelant and immaterial in the absence of any such evidence.</p> <p>2. After the submission to the court below of the evidence in a suit in equity to set aside a deed as having been procured by the exercise of undue influence upon the grantor, it is proper for the court to refuse to allow the complainant to amend the bill of complaint so as to charge mental incapacity and so make it conform to the evi- - dence, as such an amendment would make a new case.</p> <p>3. It is not sufficient to support a charge that the execution of an instrument was procured by fraud, that the circumstances surrounding ' its execution were suspicious. The whole case must be strong enough to establish fraud. (Following McDaniel v. Parish, 4 App. D. C. 213.)</p> <p>4. In a suit by a grandson and one of the heirs at law of a deceased grant- or to set aside a deed in trust of real estate, made by a woman eighty-three years of age, to the defendants, to be sold and the proceeds paid to a missionary society, to be used by it in the erection of a memorial building to the grantor and her deceased husband, as having been procured by undue influence, the fact that the defendants, the grantees in and trustees under the deed were members of the same missionary society, does not show that such a confidential or fiduciary relation existed between them and the grantor as will raise the presumption that they exercised undue influence upon her; nor can such disposition of the property be properly said to have been an unnatural one, where