Ambs v. Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 19 August 1890
• Citation: 44 Minn. 266
• Parties: PETER AMBS and another <I>vs.</I> CHICAGO, ST. PAUL, MINNEAPOLIS & OMAHA RAILWAY COMPANY.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 266

44 Minn. 266

PETER AMBS and another vs. CHICAGO, ST. PAUL, MINNEAPOLIS & OMAHA RAILWAY COMPANY.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

August 19, 1890.

Appeal by Julius Gross, one of the plaintiffs, from an order of the district court for Ramsey county, Kelly, J., presiding, refusing a new trial after verdict directed for defendant.

Kueffner & Fauntleroy and Stringer & Seymour, for appellant.

James H. Howe and C. D. O'Brien, for respondent.

DICKINSON, J.

This is an action to recover the possession of a lot of land in the city of St. Paul, described as lot 6, in block 36, in St Paul Proper, so called. The court directed a verdict for the defendant. This lot comprises a part of a larger tract of land, conveyed by patent from the United States to Louis Robert, in June, 1849. Both parties claim to have derived title from Robert. The land including this lot appears to have been platted into town lots by Robert, Guerin, and others, as early as 1847, although the plat was not acknowledged until February, 1849. In that platting the land in question was designated as lot 6, in block 36. The plaintiffs' claim of title is through the following conveyances by deed: (1) Warranty deed from Robert to Guerin, dated in January, 1849, and recorded in September of that year, conveying, by metes and bounds, a body of land which would embrace the lot in question were it not for the words, following the description of the land conveyed, "with the exception of lot 6, block 36, heretofore conveyed to William H. Brown by Louis Robert and wife;" (2) warranty deed from Guerin to William B. Brown, dated and recorded in April, 1849, conveying lot 6, block 36, — the lot in question; (3) warranty deed of same lot from William B. Brown to Daniel A. J. Baker, dated in May, 1851, and recorded in December, 1853. By subsequent warranty deeds an undivided one-half of the lot was conveyed by Baker, if he had the title, to the plaintiff Gross. The defendant claims to have shown title by 20 years' adverse possession under claim of title, but also by conveyances of this lot from Robert to Lamprey, in 1867, and by the latter, and through mesne conveyances, to the defendant.

It will not be necessary to consider the evidence going to show adverse possession, for, by the deeds of conveyance to which we have referred, the title does not appear to have been transferred from Robert to the plaintiff Gross, but does appear to have been conveyed from Robert to Lamprey, and from him to the defendant; and for this reason the ruling of the court was right. The excepting clause, above recited, from the deed of Robert to Guerin constitutes an exception from the grant, and not technically a reservation. The terms "with the exception," etc., following the description of the lands conveyed, were proper and of sufficiently definite meaning to express an exception from the grant, if the land to which the exception applies is designated with certainty. The deed clearly shows an intention that from the land granted by it there should be excepted a tract which was designated lot 6, in block 36, and which was further described as having been previously conveyed to William H. Brown. When it was shown that there was included within the described granted lands a lot 6, in a block 36, so designated in a plat of the lands executed by both the grantor and the grantee, and that there was no other lot 6, in a block 36, included in the granted lands, there can remain no doubt that that platted lot was the land to which the exception referred. Austrian v. Davidson, 21 Minn. 117; Ames v. Loury, 30 Minn. 283, (15 N. W. Rep. 247;) Slosson v. Hall, 17 Minn. 71, (95.) Though it were not shown that the lot had in fact been conveyed to William H. Brown, or even if it had been shown that such was not the fact, the maxim falsa demonstratio non nocet would apply, and that fact would be immaterial, the excepted lot being otherwise described with sufficient certainty.

It is said, however, that the defendant is estopped, by the language of the exception, from denying that the lot had been conveyed to William H. Brown, and the plaintiffs claim to have acquired, through the deed from William B. Brown, whatever title William H. Brown may have had. The doctrine of estoppel is not applicable. Robert, the grantor, would not have been estopped to show, as against his grantee, Guerin, that in fact the lot, well excepted from the conveyance to the latter, had not been conveyed to Brown. The recital as to such a conveyance having been made was obviously inserted simply as a means of describing the land excepted from the operation of the deed, and not as an admission or averment of a fact which might be relied on by the grantee as a fact, and with regard to which his conduct may be supposed to have been regulated, or by which his interests may have been affected. The admission or recital did not relate to the land granted by this deed, but to other land excepted from it, and the title of which remained unaffected by it. So far as concerned the land granted, or the...