Chacon v. Bruni

• Decision Date: 18 January 1939
• Docket Number: No. 10401.,10401.
• Citation: 125 S.W.2d 428
• Parties: CHACON et al. v. BRUNI et al.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

125 S.W.2d 428

CHACON et al. v. BRUNI et al.

No. 10401.

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. San Antonio.

January 18, 1939.

Rehearing Denied March 1, 1939.

Error from District Court, Webb County; R. D. Wright, Judge.

Action in trespass to try title to an undivided interest in three tracts of land by Baldomero Chacon and others against Consolacion H. Bruni and others. From a judgment denying that title was in plaintiffs, and decreeing title in the defendants, the plaintiffs bring error.

Affirmed.

E. J. Dryden, C. N. Fansler, and Gordon Gibson, all of Laredo, for plaintiffs in error.

Yale Hicks, of Laredo, for defendants in error.

SMITH, Chief Justice.

This action in trespass to try title involves title to an undivided interest in a body of land embracing about 250,000 acres lying along the Rio Grande in Webb and Zapata Counties, which was originally granted to Don Jose Vasquez Borrego by the Crown of Spain about the year 1750, and confirmed in him about the year 1767. Subsequently it was confirmed by the State of Texas.

The grant was divided, apparently before the death of Borrego, into three tracts, designated as the Dolores, the Corralitos and the San Ygnacio, or upper, middle and lower tracts, respectively.

This action was brought by Baldomero Chacon and others to recover an undivided interest in the grant, amounting to 81/420, against the executors of the last wills of A. M. Bruni and wife, Consolacion, respectively, both deceased, and those claiming under them. Upon a trial before the court without a jury judgment was rendered denying title to the plaintiffs and decreeing it in the defendants below, from which the plaintiffs below have appealed. The parties will be designated as in the trial court.

Plaintiffs claim as heirs of certain descendants of the original grantee, while defendants claim under other heirs, and by limitation. The said Jose Vasquez Borrego, the original grantee, was the common source of title. While the original grantee had several children, it appears to be conceded that the grant, insofar as it lay in Texas, passed into two of his children, Fernando, a son, and Manuela, a daughter, who married one Vidaurri, subject to claimed rights of Manuela's son, Jose Fernando Vidaurri.

It is the contention of defendants, and the trial court so found, that soon after the death of the original grantee his two said children, Fernando and Manuela, joined in a partition of the grant, whereby Fernando took the land embraced in the San Ygnacio tract, and Manuela took that embraced in the remaining two tracts, the Dolores and Corralitos, subject to any rights of Manuela's said son, Jose Fernando Vidaurri. By this partition, if effective, Fernando Borrego, under whom, alone, plaintiffs claim, parted with all interest in the Dolores and Corralitos subdivisions of the grant, and his rights were thereby concentrated in and restricted to the San Ygnacio subdivision. Defendants contend further, and finally, that Fernando was divested of his said interest in the San Ygnacio, and therefore in the whole grant, by deeds, executed in 1831 and 1832, conveying the entire San Ygnacio to Jesus Trevino. If those two major contentions of defendants, that Fernando, plaintiffs' ancestor, parted with all his rights in the Dolores and Corralitos tracts by partition, and in the San Ygnacio by deeds, were established by the evidence, as adjudged in the court below, then plaintiffs, who claim only under Fernando, show no right of recovery, and the judgment must be affirmed.

The ramifications of these titles run back through nearly two hundred years of history as reflected in a large measure by isolated documents, imperfect and loosely drawn, executed, preserved and reproduced, and in part by fragmentary and hazy evidences of obscure facts and incidents which reach back into that twilight zone "beyond which the memory of man" indeed "runneth not to the contrary." It would be impossible in this opinion, of course, to undertake to pursue these ramifications in any sort of detail as the bases of the conclusions we have reached in a laborious, albeit intriguing and interesting, study of the voluminous record; or to undertake herein to piece together the evidences of title into a coherent pattern such as that so painstakingly laid out by the learned trial judge in his findings and conclusions. In this opinion we will be obliged to dispose of the questions in more or less general conclusions, as we arrive at them, through the evidence in detail, as reflected by the trial judge's findings; for the case is one of fact, after all.

Plaintiffs have grouped their propositions...