Sullivan

Action in tort alleged to have been committed through the malting of misrepresentations as to the rental value of certain real property in the negotiations of an exchange.

The appeal is prosecuted from a judgment rendered in favor of plaintiffs for the sum pf $2,000 damages for the fraud found to have been perpetrated, after denial of a motion for nonsuit, no evidence having been pffered by defendants.

The facts may be briefly stated as follows: Plaintiffs and defendants were the owners of different parcels of improved real property situated in the city and county of San Francisco. On or about the third day of May, 1922, defendants made an offer to the plaintiffs through an agent to exchange their respective holdings. The complaint alleges that for the purpose of inducing plaintiffs to make the exchange defendants falsely stated to them that their (defendants’) property was under lease to a tenant who was paying as rental therefor the sum of $155 per month. It is admitted that the lease did provide for such rental, and that such lease was secured by a chattel mortgage on certain machinery, but it is charged that the tenant never paid such sum nor any sum greater than $135 per…