Cases Determined in the St. Louis Court of Appeals of the State of Missouri Volume 6 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 Excerpt: ...and sold to the present defendant, and about eight years elapsed before the plaintiff thought it proper to repudiate his former convictions. Plaintiff insists that there was no estoppel, because he was himself in ignorance of the true dividing-line, and was, in fact, misled by Lynch's location of it. But it does not appear that Lynch ever persuaded the plaintiff to adopt the line. The plaintiff chose to proceed upon his own conviction that the Cozzens survey was right. For this Lynch could be in no manner responsible. As to the plaintiff's ignorance, it can avail him nothing. There is a distinction between the class of cases wherein contiguous proprietors mutually agree upon a dividing-line, and those wherein the line is to be established against one party by estoppel in pais arising upon his acts whereby another has been misled. In the former, the parties are supposed to act upon a full knowledge of their respective rights. If one of them be ignorant of his rights in the premises, he will not be held to an agreement which it may be supposed he would not have entered into had he been fully informed of the facts. In the latter cases, the ignorance of him who assumes to know, or who has the means of knowing and ought to know, is no palliation of the wrong done to one-whom he causes to believe in an untruth and to act upon it to his own prejudice. Justice to the party who has been thus misled demands that his informer shall not be afterwards permitted to deny what he has asserted, upon the plea that he did not know it to be true. Hart v. Giles, Sup. Ct. Mo.);J3torrs v. Barker, 6 Johns. Ch. 166; ISoward v. Johnston, 65 Mo. 102; Turner v. Baker, 64 Mo. 218. The principle applies as well to silent acquiescence, under certain circumstances, as to open assertion. D...