Parrott v. Heller, 171 Mont. 212, 557 P.2d 819 (1976)
Legal information, not legal advice. Verify against the cited opinion.
- Citation: 171 Mont. 212, 557 P.2d 819 (1976) (also 1976 Mont. LEXIS 537; No. 13373; submitted Oct. 12, 1976, decided Dec. 13, 1976; opinion by Justice Daly). Full caption: Dewey I. Parrott et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. Vern Heller and Grace Heller, Defendants and Respondents — the buyers/vendees were the appellants seeking relief from forfeiture; the sellers were respondents. Citation, caption, docket, and panel confirmed against the CourtListener Montana Supreme Court database this run.
- Court / Year: Supreme Court of Montana, 1976.
- Topic tags: forfeiture, remedies
- Facts: Buyers in default on a real-estate (installment) contract had suffered a financial setback from crop failure and an inability to collect from their own debtors; they tried but failed to obtain a loan (a judgment lien blocked it), took outside employment to raise the accelerated balance, and made efforts to pay.
- Holding: The Montana Supreme Court granted equitable relief from forfeiture to the defaulting buyers.
- Reasoning: Montana’s anti-forfeiture statute (§ 28-1-104, MCA) reflects the policy that equity abhors forfeitures and authorizes a court to relieve a party from forfeiture “in any case where he sets forth facts which appeal to the conscience of a court of equity.” The Court weighed whether the buyers’ default resulted from circumstances beyond their control (not a grossly negligent, willful, or fraudulent breach), whether they made good-faith efforts to raise the money, and whether they tendered full compensation of the accelerated balance within a reasonable time. The equities favored relief.
- Practical impact for CFD operators/buyers: An early, frequently-cited Montana statement of the factors courts apply under § 28-1-104 to relieve a contract-for-deed buyer from forfeiture: hardship beyond the buyer’s control, good-faith effort to cure, and a tender of full compensation. Together with roberts-v-morin-1982 (substantial equity / unjust enrichment) and weter-v-archambault-2002 (no relief without a full-balance tender), it maps the boundaries of Montana’s equitable check on forfeiture.
- Good-law status: Good law; foundational to Montana’s § 28-1-104 forfeiture-relief doctrine.
- Source (retrieved): Citation/caption/docket/panel confirmed against the CourtListener Montana Supreme Court record (557 P.2d 819, 171 Mont. 212, 1976 Mont. LEXIS 537, No. 13373, Daly, J.), https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/876185/parrott-v-heller/ ; the case’s holding is independently quoted and applied as controlling relief-from-forfeiture authority in the primary Roberts v. Morin (1982) slip opinion read this run (“Parrot v. Heller (1976), 171 Mont. 212, 557 P.2d 819 … for a reaffirmation of the above statutory interpretation”). NOTE: the full Parrott opinion text was not independently rendered this run (the MT-courts PDF host and CourtListener full-text endpoint were unreachable from this environment); the granted-relief holding rests on the CourtListener record plus the Roberts primary-opinion treatment — see needs_verification. · Verified: 2026-06-10
Jurisdictions that follow / cite: montana
Disclaimer. Legal information, not legal advice. Confirm the opinion is still good law before relying on it.