Shull

This action was brought to cancel and annul a certain conveyance of real estate made by plaintiff and his wife to defendant, which instrument, while in form a deed absolute, was in fact conceded to have been given as a mortgage to secure an alleged indebtedness due from plaintiff to defendant. The appeal is from a judgment in favor of the plaintiff and an order of court denying defendant’s motion for a new trial.

It appears that a corporation known as the Domestic Utilities Manufacturing Company was engaged in the manufacture and sale of what was known on the market as the “Vacuum Clothes Washer.” The company had adopted a lengthy, complex, and confused form of agency contract in appointing agents and making sales of its washers to those who could be induced to purchase the same in lots of 1,667, and whereby the purchaser was allotted the exclusive right to operate in territory selected and agreed upon. The form and substance of this contract was, if not intended as a means for the perpetration of fraud, well calculated to deceive the unwary and appeal to the gullible, for the reason that, while the purchaser was required to pay five thousand dollars for which he received 1,667…