Letteau

This action was to have a forfeiture declared after breach of condition. The case may be better understood from a general summary of the facts.

About the year 1905 Lulu N. Letteau was the owner of real property in the city of Los Angeles, which she subdivided into three blocks of sixty lots each and placed upon the market under the name of “The Entwistle Tract”. In the deeds by which the great majority of the lots were sold the following clause appears: “ . . . said lot shall never at any time be sold rented to or occupied by any person of Negro descent; and that a violation of any of said conditions shall work a forfeiture of title thereof to said party of the first part, their successors or assigns”. This provision was omitted from the deeds to nine lots, though contained in the deed to the lot here involved.

In the year 1907, by a deed containing the provision quoted and duly recorded in the recorder’s office of the county of Los Angeles, lot fifty-one (51) of block B in said tract was conveyed to one Kershaw, from whom, by á series of conveyances, the defendant, Pauline Ellis, traces her title. In the year 1912 Lulu N. Letteau died, leaving as her heirs the plaintiffs, to…