Hess v. Meyer

• Decision Date: 18 January 1889
• Citation: 41 N.W. 422,73 Mich. 259
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: HESS v. MEYER.

41 N.W. 422

73 Mich. 259

HESS v. MEYER.

Supreme Court of Michigan

January 18, 1889

Error to circuit court, Berrien county; THOMAS O'HARA, Judge.

Ejectment by Samuel Hess against Frederick C. Meyer for land in Berrien county. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant brings error. How. St. Mich. � 622, provides: "All surveys made by county surveyors in this state must be made in accordance with the following principles, when applicable First, all corners that can be identified by the original field-notes, or other unquestionable testimony shall be regarded as the original corners, and must not be changed while they can be thus identified; second extinct interior section corners must be re-established at proportional distances, as recorded in the original field-notes, from the nearest known point in the original section line, east and west, north and south from such extinct section corner."

CHAMPLIN J.

The dispute in this case arises over the proper location of a boundary line between the land of two neighbors. The defendant owns the N. 1/2 of the S. 1/2 of the N.W. 1/4 of the N.E. 1/4 of section 3, in township 8 S., range 20 W., and the plaintiff is the owner of the S. 1/2 of the S. 1/2 of the N.W. 1/4 of the same quarter section. The plaintiff claims title to a strip of land about eight feet in width at one end and six feet at the other, now in the possession of defendant. The dispute was occasioned by surveys made by different surveyors who had been elected to the office of county surveyor, and the question turned upon the correctness of the methods employed and the accuracy of the work. Township 8 S., range 20 W., is made fractional because of its proximity to the state line between Michigan and Indiana; and in the survey made by the government of the United States the sections were surveyed full from the town line south, and the fractions were thrown into the tier bordering upon the state line. The township line between towns 7 and 8 S. formed the north line of section 3, upon which the land in dispute is situated. In making the government survey the township lines are first run. The town lines are run due east and west, and section corner posts are placed, with the appropriate witnesses, at intervals on the line 80 chains apart. Quarter section posts are also set along the line 40 chains from the section corners. These exterior lines of the township are entirely independent of the interior subdivisions, and are to be made by different surveyors; the regulation of the department of the interior which has the force of law, not allowing the same surveyor who runs the exterior township lines to subdivide it. The chains used in making the government surveys, although intended to be of standard length, are not always so, from wear in use, from climatic or other causes, and hence it is that surveys made by different surveyors, at different times seldom correspond exactly as to distances between known monuments. Township lines are required to be straight lines a distance of 480 chains. Therefore when any two known monuments are found to exist on such line a right line between these monuments would represent the location of the town line; and although the section corners on an east and west town line may, through error in the chain-men, be located and placed by the government survey either east or west of where it should properly have been placed, and must so remain, there is no such liability to error as to placing them either north or south of the proper place on such line. They are not dependent upon section corners or quarter posts placed when the interior of the sections are surveyed, because, as before stated, they are placed in position anterior to and independently of such interior surveys. It follows that, where a section corner on an east and west township line is lost, the proper method would be to run a straight line from the nearest known monument on the town line on either side of the lost corner or corners, and replace the post, according to the field-notes of the government survey, upon the straight line connecting the two known monuments. Such town line cannot be swerved from a right line by measuring from a known quarter section corner north of the line to one south of such line, and dividing the...