Carpenter v. Coles

• Decision Date: 16 December 1898
• Citation: 77 N.W. 424,75 Minn. 9
• Parties: CARPENTER v. COLES et al.
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

75 Minn. 9

77 N.W. 424

CARPENTER

v.COLES et al.

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

Dec. 16, 1898.

Appeal from district court, Washington county; F. M. Crosby, Judge.

Action by Joseph M. Carpenter against R. M. Coles and Margaret Coles. Verdict for plaintiff, and from an order refusing a new trial defendants appeal. Reversed.

Syllabus by the Court

1. All that is necessary to render possession of lands adverse, so as to set the statute of limitations in motion, is that the disseisor enter and take possession with the intention of holding the lands for himself to the exclusion of all others.

2. It is not necessary that he should enter under color of title, or under a claim that he has a legal right to enter. J. N. Castle, for appellants.

Geo. E. Budd, for respondent.

MITCHELL, J.

Action of ejectment. Defense, title by 15 years' adverse possession. The court instructed the jury that the questions were: ‘Did the defendants enter into possession of the premises fifteen years before the commencement of the action, under a claim of right so to do, and have they remained in the actual, open, continuous, hostile, and exclusive possession since that time with the intent of claiming it adversely?’ Also that: ‘A person has not any right, arbitrarily and without any claim of right, knowing that he has no right whatever, to go and take with a high hand wrongful possession of land, and avail himself of the statute of limitations.’ Also: ‘A person cannot view a piece of land that he has no kind of interest in, no title to, and enter upon it with a view of occupying it fifteen years wrongfully and without any claim of right, with a view of invoking the statute of limitations.’ The meaning of these instructions is that the statute will never run in favor of a disseisor whose adverse possession originated in a naked and willful trespass; that to set the statute in motion the entry must have been made under some color or claim of title which the disseisor claimed gave him the legal right to enter. This is clearly incorrect, for the books are full of cases where tortious entries upon and possession of land without any pretense of title or rightful claim to the land have ripened into title of adverse possession. ‘A disseisor,’ says Lord Coke, ‘is where one enters intending to usurp the possession, and to oust another of his freehold.’ So the whole inquiry is reduced to the fact of entering and the intent of the disseisor to usurp possession for himself to the...