Baker Vs Zingelman

BAKER vs ZINGELMAN

“Homemade” deeds – court will, where it is possible to do so, attempt to make sense out of an imprecisely drafted deed

Margaret and Carl DeBow were a couple that owned a tract of land that had a plat that subdivided it into lots. The property was mostly farmland and they had an antique shop back in a barn behind their farm house. They built and moved into a new home west of their land and asked their relatives to move to their old farmhouse and take over the antique shop. Margaret prepared a deed handing the property over to the Bakers, in doing this she made a rough estimate of the footage of the land but she was kind of unsure of her estimates

The Bakers moved in and family tension arose a couple years later – Margaret informed the Bakers that parts of the barn and sheds extended into her land, she hired an attorney and threatened that those parts would be forcibly removed unless they chose pay $10,000 for that strip of land

The Bakers, the plaintiffs, sued to stop Margaret from parking her truck in the garage and from cutting off part of their barn

At trial, two surveyors disclosed that all of one shed and garage and another piece of shed extended onto Margaret’s property

A lower court, however, enjoined Margaret and ordered her to hand over the strip of land to the Bakers

Margaret, defendant, appealed

• Lower court stated the description in the deed was prepared by the defendant who admitted she did not know exactly where Michigan Avenue was during deed preparation

The proposed sale of the strip for $10,000 is unreasonable – deed of 1971 transferred the majority of the land without any consideration passing

Cases do make exceptions where encroachments are minor, unlikely this small amount of land was excluded deliberately

Taking all facts into consideration, lower court is correct in their ruling – the defendant intended to convey sufficient footage to cover all buildings to her sister and husband at time of original deed

BANK OF N.Y. MELLON vs ARGO

Bank of N.Y. Mellon sued Barry and Lynn Argo

        Alleged that it is a person entitled to enforce the mortgage note and attached a copy of related documents to the complaint

        N.Y. Mellon moved for summary judgement

                A servicer for N.Y. Mellon attached copies of the note that differed from the original note attached to the complaint – it contained an extra page entitled “allonge”

        This motion for summary judgement was granted and the Argos appealed