Barr v. Guay, 619
| Decision Date | 06 April 1965 |
| Docket Number | No. 619,619 |
| Citation | 125 Vt. 1,209 A.2d 304 |
| Parties | William J. BARR v. Marcel and Carolyn GUAY. |
| Court | Vermont Supreme Court |
Ready & Brown, St. Albans, for plaintiff.
Yandell & Page, Burlington, for defendant.
Before HOLDEN, C. J., and SHANGRAW, BARNEY, SMITH, and KEYSER, JJ.
This is a dispute over the southern boundary of the last lot sold out of a tract of land on the shore of Lake Champlain. The plaintiff owns the part of that lot having the questioned boundary, and the defendants own the adjoining land to the south. It is the purpose of these proceedings to settle the common property line.
Each side contended for a particular boundary line deriving from relevant deeds and based on the testimony of its own surveyor. The trial court, in its findings, rejected the conclusions of both surveyors, and, by its order, established a third line. The defendants acknowledge this boundary to be different than the one they claim, but are willing to accept it. The plaintiff is not. As a result, he attacks the findings as unsupported by the evidence, and the judgment as unsupported by either the findings or the evidence.
The conveyances out of the large tract commenced at its outside boundaries, north and south, and progressed toward a central meeting. This meeting took place in the Barr lot, the last lot sold, whose boundary the plaintiff is trying to establish. Until the conveyances met in the Barr lot, the boundaries of the northern lots were not descriptively related to the boundaries of the southern lots.
The lot of the defendants Guay was the last, or most northerly, of the southern lots conveyed, and its boundaries are oriented only to the previous conveyances to the south of it. The pertinent provisions of the deed from the common grantor, Walker, to the Guays, read:
The description given in the Barr deed is as follows:
'A certain lot of land having a frontage on Lake Champlain of one hundred and eighty (180) feet, more or less.
'Said lot is bounded on the south by land owned by Marcell and Carolyn Guay; on the north by land owned by one John Stephen and wife; on the west by the highway Route U.S. No. 2, and on the east by the waters of Lake Champlain.
'There is also conveyed to the grantees herein a right-of-way in common with others over the existing road leading from Route U.S. No. 2 to the premises herein conveyed.
'The lot of land herein conveyed is the remaining part of a parcel of land conveyed to the grantor herein by Warranty Deed of Eileen Farrell, dated August 17, 1945, and of record in Vol. 15, page 550 of North Hero Land Records after the conveyance of two lots of land by this grantor, one being to Stephen and wife, by Warranty Deed dated June 11, 1956 and or record in Vol. 23, page 227 of North Hero Land Records, and the other being a deed to Marcel Guay and Carolyn Guay, dated November 4, 1957, and of record in Vol. 23, page 409 of North Hero Land Records.'
The finding of the trial court which establishes the boundary line between the plaintiff and the defendants reads as follows:
'The north line of Guay is a line parallel with the Cordner woven wire fence, and with the north line of Barr.
This line is one hundred fifty (150) feet distant from the iron stake at the top of the bank near the southeast corner of the Guay property. This line forms approximately a ninety (90) degree angle with the highway.'
The reference in the finding to the Cordner woven wire fence does not relate to any other finding, but it appears in the evidence that this fence marks the northern boundary of the whole parcel from which the common grantor, Walker, ultimately conveyed the guay and Barr lots. It is, in fact, the northerly boundary of the Stephen lot, which adjoins the Barr lot on the north.
The Barr conveyance, by its terms, disposed of all of the grantor's land between the Stephen lot and the Guay lot. Since both the Stephen and the Guay deeds...
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...additional evidence, if necessary, so that a decree may be drawn setting forth with certainty the bounds of defendants' lot. Barr v. Guay, 125 Vt. 1, 4, 209 A.2d 304. Judgment reversed and cause remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with the views expressed SMITH, J., did not sit. ...
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