Hughes v. The State
| Decision Date | 28 October 1885 |
| Docket Number | 12,035 |
| Parties | Hughes et al. v. The State |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
From the Fayette Circuit Court.
The judgment is reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings.
R. D Marshall and W. C. Forrey, for appellants.
F. T Hord, Attorney General, R. Conner, H. L. Frost, and L. H Stanford, Prosecuting Attorney, for the State.
An affidavit was filed before a justice of the peace of Fayette county, charging Martin Hughes, Louis P. Snyder, John Remington, Peter Bainbridge and others with having, on the 13th day of June, 1884, unlawfully, maliciously and mischievously injured the real estate of one Abram B Conwell, by then and there unlawfully, maliciously and mischievously tearing down and removing a rail fence situate upon said real estate, to the damage of said real estate and of the said Conwell in the sum of $ 25.
The justice found the defendants, particularly named as above, guilty, and assessed and adjudged a fine against each one of them severally.
Upon an appeal to the circuit court, Hughes, Snyder and Bainbridge were tried together, the trial resulting in a verdict and judgment against all of them. A question was made at the proper time upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict, and that is really the controlling question now presented for our decision.
The leading facts which gave rise to this prosecution were substantially as follows: On the 14th day of March, 1854, the Junction Railroad Company, of which the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Indianapolis Railroad Company is the successor, purchased a tract of land, now in the city of Connersville, containing a fraction over eleven acres on which its freight and passenger depots were afterwards placed, and through which its main track and several side-tracks were laid. At the time of the purchase a starting point for the survey and description of the tract of land covered by it was agreed upon, but no deed was then made.
In April, 1866, Conwell laid out and platted a piece of land contiguous to the tract sold by him to the railroad company, into lots and streets known as "Conwell's northeast addition to Connersville." A question afterwards arose, and, as we infer from the evidence, still remains unsettled, whether this addition to Connersville did not lap over onto and encroach upon the railroad tract of land. In April, 1871, Conwell executed to the railroad company a deed of conveyance for a tract of land containing a fraction over eleven acres, which was intended and mutually understood as embracing the precise land bargained for by the railroad company in the first instance. Soon after this deed was executed, some one erected a rail fence along what the railroad company claimed to be the northern boundary of the tract of land thus conveyed to it by Conwell, and the company continued thereafter to claim title up to that fence. Some time after this fence was erected nothing showing how long, Conwell became dissatisfied with its location as a boundary line between him and the railroad company, and asserted a claim to a strip of ground south of the fence which afterwards became disputed territory between him and the company. With the coming of the spring of 1884, the controversy over this strip of ground became more definite and aggressive, Early in May of that year, Conwell caused a new survey to be made of the premises, and that survey resulted in staking off and marking a line about four rods further south than the fence as the supposed true boundary line. The railroad company refused to recognize the correctness of that survey and so the controversy continued. In the meantime, some efforts looking to an amicable adjustment were made by the company under circumstances which gave some promise of success. With the view apparently of bringing matters to a...
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