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trialfiduciarywill
plaintiffdefendantdamagestrialfiduciarysustained

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Williams v. Dougherty County, 101 Ga.App. 193, 113 S.E.2d 168

Facts

Fannie Belle Williams owned property that was subject to a right-of-way deed for a state-aid road. In April 1954, an agent named Buck Geer, acting for Dougherty County and the State Highway Department, approached Williams and falsely claimed that they did not pay for such deeds and that she would face significant trouble if she did not sign. Williams, being an uneducated woman, believed Geer and signed the deed, which stated a consideration of one dollar, but she received no actual payment. The county and the State Highway Department were aware that they were required to compensate her for the property but misled her into signing the deed without payment.

The false statements made to the plaintiff by the said Geer were known to him to be false at the time that he made them, and that at the time he made said false and fraudulent statements, the said Geer was acting as the agent of the defendant and the State Highway Department of Georgia, and that said statements were made by the said Geer for the purpose of misleading and deceiving the plaintiff and said statements of the said Geer were relied upon by the plaintiff and she sustained her damages as the proximate result of the false and misleading statements made to her by the said Geer.

Issue

Did the alleged fraudulent misrepresentations made by the agent of the county constitute actionable fraud given the absence of a fiduciary relationship?

Where a plaintiff seeks to recover from a defendant because of alleged fraudulent misrepresentations and there is no fiduciary relationship between the parties, though the plaintiff be ignorant and the defendant exceptionally well educated, if the only alleged misrepresentation is as to law or as to a matter of law no actionable fraud is set forth.

Rule

Fraud cannot be predicated upon misrepresentations of law or matters of law when there is no fiduciary relationship between the parties, even if one party is uneducated and the other is well-educated.

The general rule is well settled that fraud cannot be predicated upon misrepresentations of law or misrepresentations as to matters of law.

Analysis

The court analyzed the statements made by Geer and determined that they were misrepresentations of law, which do not support a claim for actionable fraud. The court emphasized that Williams, despite her lack of education, was presumed to know the law and should not have relied solely on Geer's representations. The absence of a fiduciary relationship further weakened her claim, as the law does not protect individuals from misrepresentations of legal matters when they have the opportunity to seek independent legal advice.

In the present case no such contention is made, the plaintiff relying on the allegation that she was ‘an ignorant and uneducated woman, and that there is great disparity between her mental capacity and that of the said Geer, and that the said Geer, acting for the defendant and the State Highway Department of Georgia, took advantage of this disparity in mental ability in inducing the plaintiff to sign said right-of-way deed, which she would not have signed except for the fraud practiced upon her by the said Geer as aforesaid.’

Conclusion

The court affirmed the trial court's judgment, concluding that there was no actionable fraud due to the nature of the misrepresentations and the lack of a fiduciary relationship.

Accordingly, for this reason the trial court did not err in sustaining the defendant's general demurrer and it becomes unnecessary to pass on the other grounds of demurrers successfully urged before the trial court by the defendant.

Who won?

Dougherty County prevailed in the case because the court found that the alleged misrepresentations were not actionable fraud as they pertained to matters of law and there was no fiduciary relationship.

The defendant, Dougherty County, and the State Highway Department for the county, filed various demurrers, both special and general, to the petition as amended.

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