Duke v. Harden
| Decision Date | 06 August 1953 |
| Docket Number | 5 Div. 541 |
| Citation | 66 So.2d 899,259 Ala. 398 |
| Parties | DUKE v. HARDEN et ux. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
Harry D. Raymon, Tuskegee, for appellant.
Cope & Cope, Union Springs, for appellees.
Statutory bill by appellees Harden against appellant Duke to quiet title to about seventy acres of land in the W 1/2 of the SW 1/4 of Section 29, Township 16, Range 22, lying south and west of Cubahatchee Creek in Macon County.
The case was heard in open court before the trial judge and in the light of the favorable presumption attending his conclusion on the disputed evidence, it would be unwarranted for us to overturn it. Since the issue was one typically for decision by the trial court, we will refer to the facts only briefly.
Appellees acquired the land in 1949 and have a perfect paper title from the United States. At the time of the suit all except two acres of the land in the southern portion was wild land, overgrown with underbrush and trees. The two acres was meadow land and had been in recent cultivation. But throughout the recollection of the witnesses for appellees and until a few years before appellees acquired it, the land had been cultivated by appellees' predecessors in title and a part of it within 100 yards of the creek, which bounds the land on the north. Each year recently, however, the undergrowth had more or less crowded in on the cultivated land until finally only the two acres was left open. But this two acres has been utilized along with other adjoining land of the appellees immediately south of it by their tenant, Bruce, whose tenant house is located only about one-quarter of a mile south of the two-acre tract. The entire field, including the two acres, has been used by this tenant as one tract. He occupies the house and has so occupied it for a period of over fifty years and had cultivated the two acres along with the remaining portion of the field in recent years. The evidence for appellees established rather preponderantly that from the earliest recollection of the witnesses appellees' predecessors in title had always exercised such acts of possession over the property as that character of land was susceptible of, claimed it as their own and cultivated it at various times in connection with the rest of the larger tract.
The appellant's title seems to have originated in a decree in which the lands were sold in the city court of Montgomery in equity, as a part of the estate of one Tuttle and by various conveyances the lands were acquired by one Spratling, whose heirs conveyed and same to appellant along with another tract of 524 acres, but the deed showing that there was eliminated from the warranty of title the tract of land here in dispute.
The property has been doubly assessed for taxation since 1889.
We recently made reference to the burden of proof in this type of case. In Spradling v. May, Ala.Sup., 65 So.2d 494, 498, we said:
'The law places such a high dignity upon a regular documentary title and requires such strict formalities to evidence it that a...
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Lay v. Phillips
...v. Lyon, 181 Ala. 531, 61 So. 299; Green v. Marlin, 219 Ala. 27, 121 So. 19; Bradley v. Hall, 239 Ala. 544, 195 So. 883; Duke v. Harden, 259 Ala. 398, 66 So.2d 899. The appellant therefore failed to establish by proof of the required degree his right by adverse possession to the land involv......
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Hagan v. Crowley
...19; Williams v. Lyon, 181 Ala. 531, 61 So. 299; McCreary v. Jackson Lumber Co., 148 Ala. 247, 41 So. 822.' See, also, Duke v. Harden, 259 Ala. 398, 400, 66 So.2d 899. It appears, as already noted, that the only possessory acts by the defendant Hagan prior to 1946 were occasional visits for ......
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Machen v. Wilder
...one claiming adverse possession. Hagan v. Crowley, 265 Ala. 291, 90 So.2d 760; Spradling v. May, 259 Ala. 10, 65 So.2d 494; Duke v. Harden, 259 Ala. 398, 66 So.2d 899. We said in Spradling v. May, supra (259 Ala. 10, 65 So.2d "The law places such a high dignity upon a regular documentary ti......
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Water Works & Sanitary Sewer Bd. v. Parks
...provided no one else [is] in possession." Long v. Ladd, 273 Ala. 410, 413, 142 So.2d 660, 662 (1962); see also Duke v. Harden, 259 Ala. 398, 400, 66 So.2d 899, 900 (1953) ("[T]he appellees and their predecessors in title were the holders of the legal title and their possessory acts over a p......