Albritton v. Fairley
| Decision Date | 11 February 1918 |
| Docket Number | 19947 |
| Citation | 116 Miss. 705,77 So. 651 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | ALBRITTON v. FAIRLEY |
APPEAL from the chancery court of Harrison county, HON. W. J. Gex Special Chancellor.
Suit by Jennie T. Albritton against Mrs. N. M. Fairley. From a judgment for defendant, plaintiff appeals.
The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.
Judgment reversed and case remanded.
Griffith & Wallace, for appellant and J. R. McDowell.
It was to meet just such cases as this that the statute, section 4285, was passed, although there has been much quibbling over it, and some few decisions have seemed bent on judicially repealing it, but those are not the later decisions. The later decisions have come back to the case of Dodds v Marx, 63 Miss. 443, which upheld a description as follows: "Lot two and parts of lots one and three Harley plat in Hazelhurst, section 3 township 10, range 8 East, and the court held in that case, p. 446" (the description is the one quoted) "was sufficient as it could be applied by the aid of parol evidence to lot two, and thirteen feet off lot three, square three, in the Harley plat and it was clearly shown that it was intended for these parcels. Compare that description in that case with what it was held it could be shown to cover, and then compare it with the case we have here, and we submit all supposed difficulty in our case disappears.
How the idea could ever have arisen in the face of the statute, and in view of such an often reaffirmed decision as the above that the assessment roll and the tax deed only could be looked to, is strange indeed. But it is even stranger when we find that the next two sentences in the Dodds v. Marx case has given rise to most of the quibbling. The opinion continues:
A clue is defined by the dictionaries as "a hint or suggestion which guides one in an intricate case" and in Herman v. De Moines, 98 N.W. 609, it is said that a clue is a thing which, if followed up diligently, would lead to a discovery.
And yet in some decisions and the effect of the lower court's decision in this case is that the clue must be within itself full information, or a full description; in other words that the only clue that will do is an assessment that is a perfect description in itself, and in effect that there is no such statute as section 4285, Code 1906.
There is nothing to do here except by the aid of parol to apply the description on the assessment roll to the land here in question nothing in either has to be eliminated, nothing changed, nothing disregarded, nothing to do but to apply or fit the fifty feet assessed to appellee in the east half of lots seven to twelve to the fifty feet in said east half of the said lots seven to twelve owned by her, it being the only fifty feet therein separately owned.
We cite Railroad v. Leblanc, supra, on this point also, and we call especial attention to the case Wheeler v. Lynch, 89 Miss. 157, and to the statement of facts of the case and how the proof was to be arrived at, the brief of appellant and the opinion of the court specially approving that brief.
The case Reed v. Heard, 97 Miss. 743, is also closely in point, and disposes of some of the cases which had seemed to hold a distinction as between latent and patent ambiguities, and which discusses the law much better than we could attempt to do it, and we cite also Standard Drug Co. v. Pierce, 111 Miss. 354.
T. A. Wood and Denny & Denny, for appellee.
It is insisted in this case by the appellant that lots No. seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven and twelve, in Block No. 100 is one hundred and sixty feet running east and west, that these lots were divided in halves, and that Smith owned the western half, eighty feet and that Stepesich and Mrs. M. N. Fairley owned the other half, Stepesich owning thirty feet off the east end and Mrs. M. N. Fairley owning forty feet.
The record herein shows that Smith owned the west half eighty feet. In order to prove where Mrs. Fairley's fifty feet was, the assessment of Stepesich was introduced at page No 50 of said transcript, which are in these words: "D. N. Steppesich," thirty feet off west end, lots seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve, in Block No. 100." Mrs. Fairley's assessment on the same page shows Mrs. Fairley's "fifty feet on east half of lots seven to twelve, in block 100." This is the only assessment on the assessment roll and was introduced here to show that Stepesich owned the thirty feet off of the east end of these lots, whereas the assessment shows the west end. There is no...
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Carr v. Barton
...596; Reed v. Heard, 97 Miss. 743; Railroad v. LeBlanc, 74 Miss. 650; Standard Drug Co. v. Pierce, 111 Miss. 354. In the case of Albritton v. Farley, 116 Miss. 705, the tax deed described a piece of property as: "One lot fifty feet on the east one-half of lot seven to twelve," and where the ......
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Langstaff v. Town of Durant
... ... Given ... the factors above enumerated, with confidence we say that the ... assessment is perfectly valid. See Albritton v ... Fairley, 77 So. 651; Drug Co. v. Pierce, 71 ... So. 577; Wheeler v. Lyncy, 89 Miss. 157; Pierce v ... Tharp, 79 Miss. 7 ... ...
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BOARD OF COM'RS OF PITKIN COUNTY v. Timroth
...court nevertheless determined that equity required a different result where the deed misdescribed the property sold); Albritton v. Fairley, 116 Miss. 705, 77 So. 651 (1918) (extrinsic evidence admitted to cure an ambiguous property description); Riggle v. Skill, 9 N.J.Super. 372, 74 A.2d 42......
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Jefferson v. Walker
...given tract of land by the aid of parol testimony, and also under such facts as were disclosed in the cases of Reed v. Heard, and Albritton v. Fairley, supra. In case of Miller v. Fulliwiley, 192 Miss. 846, 7 So.2d 799, the assessment to Fulliwiley was for the 'E 1/2 of SW & NW 1/4 of SE an......