## Facts

- In 1946, Harry and Rose Handlery conveyed a parcel in Vallejo, California, to the County of Solano for $10.
- The 1946 grant deed restricted use to a county fair or exposition and related purposes, potentially including a public park, playground, and recreational area.
- The 1946 deed prohibited the County from selling, assigning, or transferring the property.
- The 1946 deed included an express reversionary provision stating that breach of any condition, restriction, or covenant would cause the land to immediately revert to the grantors and their successors.
- In 1947, the same grantors executed a quitclaim deed to the County for the same property.
- The 1947 quitclaim deed repeated substantially similar use restrictions but omitted the express reversion language found in the 1946 deed.
- Decades later, a dispute arose over whether the County owned the property free of restrictions and whether the Handlery family retained any reversionary or enforcement rights.
- The County filed a quiet title action seeking a declaration of unrestricted fee simple ownership; Paul Handlery (as heir and trustee) cross-complained for declaratory relief regarding the parties’ rights under the deeds.
- The trial court granted summary judgment for the County on both the complaint and cross-complaint, concluding the County held title free of the asserted limitations.

## Issues

1. Whether the 1947 quitclaim deed, by omitting the express reversion clause, extinguished the reversionary interest created in the 1946 grant deed as a matter of law.
2. Whether the deeds’ use restrictions and any related forfeiture or reversion rights remained enforceable such that summary judgment quieting title free of restrictions was improper.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal reversed the summary judgment for the County.
- The court held the County failed to establish, as a matter of law, that it owned the property free of the 1946 reversionary interest and the deeds’ use restrictions.
- The court concluded the two deeds, read together, were reasonably susceptible to more than one interpretation regarding the grantors’ intent and the effect of the 1947 quitclaim deed.
- The court remanded for further proceedings because factual development (including potential extrinsic evidence) was required to resolve the ambiguities.

## Legal Principles

- Deeds are interpreted to effectuate the parties’ mutual intent at the time of conveyance; where language is reasonably susceptible to multiple interpretations, factual issues may preclude summary judgment.
- Summary judgment is inappropriate when a written instrument is materially ambiguous and competing reasonable inferences can be drawn from the text and surrounding circumstances.
- A later quitclaim deed does not, without clear expression, necessarily negate or extinguish interests and conditions created in an earlier deed; omission of a clause is not automatically dispositive.
- When a party seeks to quiet title free of restrictions, it bears the burden on summary judgment to show entitlement to that judgment as a matter of law; unresolved interpretive and scope questions defeat that showing.

## Conclusion

The appellate court reversed because the sequential 1946 and 1947 deeds could reasonably be read in more than one way on whether the reversionary interest and use restrictions survived, requiring factfinding rather than summary adjudication quieting title in unrestricted fee simple.


County of Solano v. Handlery, 155 Cal. App. 4th 566, 66 Cal. Rptr. 3d 201 (Cal. Ct. App. 2007)