Crease v. Lawrence

• Decision Date: 19 February 1887
• Citation: 3 S.W. 196
• Parties: CREASE and another <I>v.</I> LAWRENCE.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

Page 196

3 S.W. 196

CREASE and anotherv.

LAWRENCE.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

February 19, 1887.

Appeal from circuit court, Saline county. In chancery.

U. M. & G. B. Rose, R. C. Newton, and R. A. Howard, for appellants. Ratcliffe & Fletcher, for appellee.

BATTLE, J.

On the eighteenth day of April, 1882, A. Sophia Crease and Laura C. Lewis filed their complaint in equity in the Saline circuit court against W. A. Lawrence, alleging the following facts: About the year 1844, John H. Crease, the father of the plaintiffs, occupied certain lands lying in Saline county. On the twenty-eighth of June, 1855, George C. Watkins conveyed these lands to Jane Crease, the wife of John H. Crease. On the twenty-sixth day of July, 1871, Crease and wife conveyed the lands to plaintiffs. John H. Crease and wife were in actual, adverse, and peaceable possession of the land from 1844 until 1872, when they both died, and, from the time of their death, plaintiffs remained in like possession until 1880, making a continuous possession of more than 30 years. About the twenty-seventh of February, 1880, defendant, knowing these facts, entered upon one tract of the land, and made a small improvement on it, claiming by virtue of a deed executed by John T. Jones, as an attorney in fact for L. A. Epperson, C. W. Epperson, C. L. Scrutchfield, and S. F. Scrutchfield, dated twenty-seventh of February, 1880. Since his entry, defendant has committed many trespasses on the tract claimed by him, and still continues to do so, and by his claim casts a cloud over the title of plaintiffs. And they prayed for an injunction against the trespasses complained of, for possession, for an account of rents, and for general relief.

The defendant answered, and denied that John H. Crease ever occupied the land in controversy; that plaintiff had actual and continued occupancy and possession thereof for seven years next before the twenty-eighth of February, 1880; and that Watkins had any title to the land on the twenty-eighth of June, 1855, when he conveyed to Mrs. Crease. He averred that Watkins pretended to derive title from one S. M. Rutherford, who conveyed to him by deed dated September 30, 1854; that on the twelfth of June, 1846, in a suit then pending in the chancery court of Pulaski county, wherein Albert Epperson was plaintiff, and Muchberry H. Beatty, and Samuel M. Rutherford and others were defendants, it was decreed, among other things, that all the right, title, and interest of said defendants in the land in question should be divested out of them, and vested in Beatty, and that the land should be sold by Milton Fowler, as commissioner; that Fowler, as such commissioner, sold the land on the nineteenth of October, 1846, pursuant to the decree, and executed a deed to Epperson, who bought at his sale; that on the twenty-seventh of February, 1880, L. A. Epperson and others, only heirs of Albert Epperson, who had died in the meantime, by John T. Jones, their attorney in fact, conveyed the land to defendant; that since the conveyance of the land by Fowler, or soon thereafter, Epperson, and those claiming under him, have had possession and control of the land openly and adversely. He denied that he took forcible...