Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 1.djvu/194

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a whole is completed, so that the Courts will enforce the trust which was raised by the notes loaned to serve as a consideration for the grant. Even if the payments had not been made the Courts might hold that a trust had resulted, although they might not enforce it unless the plaintiff should make the payments. In Runnels v. Jackson[1] no payment had been made, and a contract for payment from a certain crop had been broken by the complainant, although a subsequent tender of the money was made by him.

The length to which a Court will go in inferring that a trust results from acts which can mean nothing but a loan is illustrated by that case of Runnels v. Jackson,[1] in which the person who took the grant of the land expressly refused at the time to lend the money to the person for whose benefit be actually took the land and paid the money. Yet the Court held that there was a loan and that a trust resulted.

And the same tendency is peculiarly shown by White v. Sheldon,[2] where a trust was held to result in favor of an attorney who had rendered, was rendering, and continued to render services, before, at, and after the time of the grant of mining land to another who furnished the money for the purpose. Neither of these cases contains the element of notes, but in Runnels v. Jackson the person who was held to be a cestui que trust had not paid anything, and the decree in his favor required him to pay what was held to have been a loan when the trust resulted. In White v. Sheldon the Court speaks of the services of the plaintiff as a part of the consideration, and says, “Equity looks to the consideration, and creates a trust in favor of him who furnishes it, regardless of whether such consideration be money, or labor, or property given in exchange.” But in view of the principle of resulting trusts that the land is affected by the same trusts, if any, which affected the money,[3] and since money was actually spent by the defendant in White v. Sheldon to complete the transaction, which was somewhat complicated, it seems to be clearer to regard the money as in part a loan to the cestui que trust in anticipation of the services by which he was to pay for it. Thus the services which followed the grant resemble the subsequent payment of a note by a cestui que trust. Then if the Court had said enforces instead of “creates,” it would seem to be more correct in describing the effect of the


  1. 1.0 1.1 1 How. (Miss.) 358 (1836).
  2. 4 Nev. 280 (1868).
  3. Gibson v. Foote, 40 Miss. 788 (1886).