Sontag

The plaintiffs have appealed from a judgment which was rendered against them following an order sustaining defendants’ demurrer to the complaint without leave to amend the pleading. The complaint alleges fraud on the part of the defendants in procuring from the plaintiffs a deed of conveyance to their real property and extrinsic fraud in preventing them from appearing or answering a complaint filed by the defendants in a proceeding to declare the deed to be a mortgage and to foreclose that instrument. The complaint in this action seeks to annul the deed and to set aside the judgment of foreclosure on the ground of extrinsic fraud. The demurrer was sustained on the theory that the complaint affirmatively shows that the plaintiffs and defendants were guilty of collusion and fraud in the transaction which is involved to defeat a creditor of plaintiffs, and that since they were in pari delicto a court of equity will not interfere. The refusal to accept jurisdiction is based on the maxim that “he who comes into a court of equity must come with clean hands”.

The complaint alleges that the plaintiffs, who are husband and wife, are the owners of four parcels of land in Los Angeles County…