Preble v. Abrahams

Citations

• 88 Cal. 245
• 26 P. 99
• 1891 Cal. LEXIS 678

Syllabus

<p>Vendor and Purchaser — Contract of Sale-—Obligation of Purchaser •— Reformation. —An agreement signed both by the vendors and by the purchaser, in which the vendors agree to sell to the purchaser a certain tract of land at a certain price per acre, and upon payment of the price to make, execute, acknowledge, and deliver to the purchaser a good and sufficient deed, vesting the title of the property in him, obligates the purchaser as strongly to buy and to pay the price specified as it does the vendors to sell for that psiee, and needs no reformation to insert an express agreement by the purchaser to purchase the property, which is alleged to have been omitted by mistake.</p> <p>Id.—Description of Land — Statute of Frauds — Contemporaneous Sale. — A contract to sell “forty acres of the eighty-acre tract at Biggs ” is sufficiently certain to satisfy the statute of frauds, where it appears from the evidence that the vendors at the date of the contract sold the western half of the tract to another purchaser by a contemporaneous agreement clearly specifying the part sold, leaving only the eastern half of the tract as the subject-matter of the sale in controversy.</p> <p>Id. — Parol Evidence — Identification of Subject-matter. — Parol evidence is always admissible to explain the surrounding circumstances, and the situation and relations of the parties at and immediately before the execution of the contract, in order to connect the description with the thing intended, and thereby to identify the subject-matter, and to explain all technical terms and phrases used in a special or local sense.</p> <p>Id. — Certainty of Description — Maxim. — The description need not be absolutely certain, either from the writing itself or by reference to some other writing; but it is sufficient if the subject-matter is identified, and the terms appear reasonably certain, when the court is placed by parol evidence in the situation of the parties, in consonance with the maxim, Cerium eat quod