Stewart v. Yesler Estate, Inc.

Citations

• 46 Wash. 256
• 89 P. 705
• 1907 Wash. LEXIS 601

Syllabus

<p>Specific Performance — Laches — Evidence — Sufficiency. Specific performance of a contract for an interest in lands will he denied on account of inexcusable laches, where the plaintiff and associates, in 1888, agreed to advance the cost of clearing, platting, and selling the land and paying the taxes thereon, the plaintiff to have a one-sixth interest on the returns from sales, after paying a stated sum to the owner and repayment of disbursements, but plaintiff and his associates failed to perform any part of the agreement during a long period of financial depression, allowing the lands to be sold to the defendant for taxes, in the interest of creditors of the estate of the owner, who carried the same, and where plaintiff only commenced action in 1905, when the land had increased tenfold in value, four years after notice that defendant denied his interest in the property.</p>