Bailey v. Look

• Decision Date: 31 July 1981
• Citation: 432 A.2d 1271
• Parties: Richard E. BAILEY and Mary Ellen Bailey v. Carroll F. LOOK.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

Page 1271

432 A.2d 1271

Richard E. BAILEY and Mary Ellen Bailey v. Carroll F. LOOK.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Argued May 4, 1981.

Decided July 31, 1981.

Law Offices of Ronald R. Coles, Carletta M. Smith (orally), Machias, for plaintiffs.

Rudman & Winchell, Thomas Z. Hodson (orally), Bangor, for defendant.

Before McKUSICK, C. J., and WERNICK, GODFREY and ROBERTS, JJ.

GODFREY, Justice.

Defendant Carroll F. Look appeals from a judgment of the Superior Court declaring the common boundary between parcels of land owned by Look and the plaintiffs. The Superior Court entered judgment for the plaintiffs after adopting a referee's report that found the plaintiffs' placement of the boundary to be correct. On appeal Look contends that the referee erred as a matter of law in concluding that the deed from the parties' common grantor to Look was ambiguous and that extrinsic evidence was admissible to clarify the land description in that deed. We affirm the judgment of the Superior Court.

During hearings before the referee the following evidence was presented which tended to support the plaintiffs' theory of where the disputed boundary line was located:

Look had received title to his property through a deed, dated December 14, 1961, from one J. Dexter Thomas. Thomas had in turn received title to the tract through a deed dated June 30, 1953, from Albert and Julia Richard. In the deed from the Richards to Thomas, the land conveyed was described as follows:

(A) certain lot or parcel of land situate in the town of Jonesboro, county and state aforesaid, bounded and described as follows, to wit: Beginning on the southerly side of U. S. Highway # 1 at an iron bolt driven in the ground at the northwesterly corner of land of Eastern Pulp Wood Company, thence generally southerly by and with the westerly line of land of Eastern Pulp Wood Company and running a distance of 1200 feet, more or less, to an iron bolt driven in the ground; thence generally westerly and running a distance of 1200 feet, more or less, to another iron bolt driven in the ground; thence generally northerly and running a distance of 1200 feet, more or less, to an iron bolt driven in the ground on the southerly side of U. S. Highway # 1; thence generally easterly by and with the southerly side of U. S. Highway # 1 and running a distance of 1200 feet, more or less, to the first mentioned iron bolt, marking the place of beginning.

The deed from Thomas to Look contained an identical description of the tract.

That description of the property resulted from negotiations between Albert Richard and Thomas during the spring of 1953. Thomas had approached Richard with an offer to buy some of Richard's land for use as a gravel pit. The two had agreed on a boundary for Thomas's tract and settled upon a selling price. After Thomas had paid for the land but before he had received a deed, Richard drove several iron bolts into the ground to mark the boundary upon which the parties had agreed. When Richard requested his attorney to prepare a deed to the tract, the attorney asked him whether he knew the distance between each of the iron bolts. Because Richard did not know any of the distances between the bolts, the attorney inserted in the description of the parcel an arbitrary distance of "1200 feet, more or less" between the successive iron bolts. Thereafter, Richard tendered and Thomas accepted a deed indicating that the boundaries of the parcel were marked by iron bolts separated by "1200 feet, more or less." Thomas preserved that description of the tract in his deed to Carroll Look.

After Thomas had sold the tract to Look, Richard conveyed another portion of his property to the plaintiffs, Richard and Mary Ellen Bailey. In part, the deed from Richard to the Baileys described the parcel as bordering on the southern and western boundaries of the tract Richard had conveyed to J. Dexter Thomas.

From 1961, when he purchased his tract, until 1974, Look removed gravel from a pit within the confines of the iron bolts that Richard had driven into the ground. In 1974, however, the Baileys noticed that Look's excavations had crossed over the supposed boundary line and had begun to undermine the Bailey's blueberry fields. Seeking to ascertain whether a trespass had actually occurred, the Baileys hired a surveyor to determine the location of the southern and western boundaries of Look's property. The surveyor discovered the bolts that marked the termini of the southern border but could not find the bolt that would have established the northern terminus of the western border. However, the surveyor testified that, aided by Richard and several persons who had worked in the area where the missing bolt should have been found, he was able to replace that bolt within a few inches of its original position in the ground. Although the bolts the surveyor was able to locate were separated by far less than 1200 feet, the surveyor could not find any other bolts that would have answered the distance calls in Look's deed. Having found or replaced all the bolts mentioned in the deed from Thomas to Look, and reasoning that the bolts should take precedence over the apparently incorrect distance calls of "1200 feet, more or less," the surveyor plotted the southern and western boundaries of Look's property by linking the iron bolts.

On the basis of the evidence recounted above, the referee concluded that the southern and western boundaries of Look's property should be established by connecting the iron bolts. In the referee's view, the iron bolts that Richard had driven into the ground had the status of...