Regla v. Martin

Citations

• 19 Cal. 463

Syllabus

<p>Plaintiffs in 1859, as heirs of one Castro, filed their bill to set aside a decree obtained against them in 1853 by defendant, for the specific performance of a contract between him and their ancestor, Castro. The ground of this bill is fraud upon the part of Martin, in obtaining the decree and in the proceedings leading to it, and also] other grounds applicable to three of the defendants, who were infants at the time of the decree : Held—the Court below having found the question of fraud in fact against plaintiffs—that the finding is conclusive of the case under the circumstances, especially as the matters relied on to establish fraud were mostly mere circumstances of suspicious or equivocal import, and no motion was made for new trial, on the ground that the finding was contrary to evidence.</p> <p>Held, further, that the omission in the decree to give the infants a day in Court, after arriving at age, to show cause against the decree, is no ground of objection to it so far as the adults are concerned.</p> <p>The mere omission, in a decree against minors, to give them a day in Court, after arriving at age, to show cause against the decree, does not make the decree fraudulent and void.</p> <p>If the minors had right in law to contest the decree after reaching their majority, the omission in the decree to recite that right would not deprive them of it.</p> <p>An infant, against whom a decree has been regularly rendered after service of process, has no peremptory right at any future time to file a bill and claim that the decree is void, and that all the matters of the original litigation shall be retried. And hence, where the infant files such bill to set aside the decree for fraud in fact in procuring it, and also for fraud because the decree does not reserve to the infant a day in Court, after coming of age, to contest it, and the Court below finds against the infant on his charge of fraud in fact, the finding- will be conclusive on the whole case, unless there