Morris v. Morris

637 S.E.2d 838 (2006)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

In 1966, E. E. Morris purchased 548 acres of land. On December 30, 1993, he entered into an agreement to lease all of his farmlands to his son Harold Wayne Morris (D) for five years in exchange for annual rental payments of $22,000. Eight months later, E.E. and D entered into another contract giving D a ten-year option to buy E.E's land for $260,000. Although the option contract refers to the warranty deeds which describe all 548 acres of land, the option contract itself does not expressly describe all 548 acres. It describes only 312 of those acres. The other 236 acres, identified in two paragraphs of one of the 1966 warranty deeds, are not specifically described in the option contract. In December 1995, E. E. made his last will and testament, naming as beneficiaries his children Linda Morris Peck, Marion Morris, and Derrell Dean Morris. He expressly excluded D from any inheritance under the will, providing that he was doing so because both the contract to rent the farm and the option contract to buy the farm were substantially below fair market value, and D would thereby receive his proportionate share of the estate. E. E. passed in 1997. On January 8, 2003, D notified his brother Marion Morris (P), who was the executor of their father's estate, that he wanted to exercise his option to buy the land and that he had the money to do so. On March 20, 2003, P filed a declaratory judgment action, asserting that D had notified him that he is entitled to purchase all of their father's land, including the 236 acres that are not expressly identified in the option contract. D testified that he and his father had discussed the option contract and their agreement was for it to cover all of the lands, just as he was working all of the lands under the lease agreement. P testified that in August 1994, E.E. had discussed the lease and option contract with him, and he had no question at that time that his father had given D the option to buy all of the lands. E.E. made no distinction between all of the land that D was working under the lease and the land that was in the option contract and that E.E. never mentioned giving an option on only part of the land. Elizabeth McDonald, who for 30 years had been the secretary to the lawyer who prepared the option contract, testified that, per the usual office routine, she had typed the contract from notes made by the lawyer during his consultation with the client and from the lawyer's dictation of the contract terms, and that she had used the applicable warranty deeds to insert legal descriptions of the property into the contract. She testified that she had no doubt that while typing the contract, she had inadvertently left the property in question - the 236 acres described in two paragraphs of one of E. E. Morris' 1966 warranty deeds - out of the option contract. D filed an amendment to his pleadings to request that the option contract be reformed to include the missing land. The trial court denied P's motion to strike. The court found a mutual mistake but refused to reform the contract, ruling that despite the mistake made in preparing the contract, D had waited too long to attempt to correct the mistake. D appealed.