King v. U.S., 77-1907

• Decision Date: 30 October 1978
• Docket Number: No. 77-1907,77-1907
• Citation: 585 F.2d 1213
• Parties: A. Campbell KING, Jr., and wife, Mary Jane King, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 1213

585 F.2d 1213

A. Campbell KING, Jr., and wife, Mary Jane King, Appellants, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 77-1907.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued June 7, 1978.

Decided Oct. 30, 1978.

Roger L. Dillard, Jr. and Kent Coward, Sylva, N. C. (Coward, Coward & Dillard, Sylva, N. C., on brief), for appellants.

Robert W. Frantz, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C. (James W. Moorman, Asst. Atty. Gen., Washington, D. C., Harold M. Edwards, U. S. Atty., Asheville, N. C., Jacques B. Gelin and Eva R. Datz, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., William W. Bargeron, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture on brief), for appellee.

Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, RUSSELL, Circuit Judge, and HOFFMAN, ^* District Judge.

DONALD RUSSELL, Circuit Judge:

This is an action under § 2409a, 28 U.S.C., to quiet title to eight tracts of land claimed by the United States located in Jackson and Transylvania Counties in western North Carolina. The action was referred to a Special Master by consent of the parties. The warrant for such appointment was "that the matters in controversy in this case are complicated and complex and will involve the introduction and explanation of: detailed and intricate maps, charts and overlays". Under the terms of reference, the Special Master's "findings of fact * * * (were to) be final." The Special Master proceeded to take the testimony and to make his findings of fact and conclusions of law, as reported to the District Court. By his findings of fact and conclusions of law, he upheld the title of the Plaintiffs to five of the tracts of land in question. The Plaintiffs did not except to the Special Master's report. The Government did except. After a hearing on the Government's exceptions, the District Court vacated the Special Master's Report and directed the dismissal of the Plaintiffs' action. The Plaintiffs have appealed. We remand the action for further proceedings.

At the outset, we are hindered in our consideration of the appeal by the absence in either the Special Master's Report or the Opinion of the District Court of a clear tracing of the claimed chain of title of the Government to all or a part of the five tracts remaining in controversy. The Special Master made no such finding because he held that the Government had failed to introduce any proper chain of title under the law of North Carolina. The District Court reversed this ruling of the Special Master and simply found that a stipulation between the parties, made during trial, constituted an agreement that a listing of the deeds in the Government's chain of title should be treated for purposes of the decision, as proper evidence of chain of title. Assuming such deeds represented a chain of title, it made no attempt to spell out this chain of title as the Special Master had done with reference to the Plaintiffs' chain of title.

Our problem at this stage is thus that the findings of neither the Special Master nor the District Court make it entirely clear just what is the Government's source of title for all of the tracts in dispute. The Government states in its brief that some of the tracts were never owned by the Grimshawe family, through whom the Plaintiffs claim, and that, so far as these tracts are concerned, the Plaintiffs are without any rights. These tracts are, however, not identified. The Special Master seems to find that the tracts which remain in dispute were the five tracts described in the exceptions set forth in the deed of Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. and his wife to M. Buchanan, to which we refer in more detail later. If this is correct, all the tracts would seem to have been included in the lands owned by Thomas Grimshawe, Sr. at the time of his death and Thomas Grimshawe, Sr. would be the common source of title for both Plaintiffs and the Government. The District Court's opinion suggests that the issue of title begins with a construction of the will of Thomas Grimshawe, Sr. This indicates that, in its analysis of the case, title to all or a part of the disputed tracts for both parties trace back to Thomas Grimshawe, Sr. For present purposes and on the record, as it presently exists, we shall treat Thomas Grimshawe, Sr. as the common source of title for the lands in dispute. This, however, is without prejudice to the right of the Government, on remand, to offer evidence of a source of title for all or a part of the land in dispute other than Thomas Grimshawe, Sr.

Under his will, Thomas Grimshawe, Sr. devised all his real estate to his two sons, Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. and Christopher Grimshawe "during the term of the natural lives of both of them, the remainder to the survivor and his heirs in fee simple, forever." On three occasions between 1897 and 1907, Christopher executed deeds in favor of his brother Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. covering lands devised to the brothers under their father's will. In the first of these, Christopher deeded "all of his interest in the lands of which their father, the late Thomas Grimshawe, Sr., died seized and possessed." In the last of these deeds, dated September 28, 1907, he conveyed to his brother Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. "all of his right, title, and interest in and to a boundary of land containing 2,000 acres, more or less, and being known as the Thomas Grimshawe, Sr., home tract." Both parties, acting on what was apparently some agreed division of the property inherited under the will of their father, also appear to have executed later a deed or contract of sale to third parties over some part of the inherited property. Thus, Christopher Grimshawe entered into an agreement on August 16, 1912, to convey to W. A. Rexford certain lands which presumably passed to the brothers under their father's will. On May 29, 1920, Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. and his wife, on the other hand, had executed a deed in favor of M. Buchanan over a tract of land, consisting of 3,206.6 acres and constituting a part of the T. Grimshawe home place with four express exceptions described by metes and bounds. It was, incidentally, these excepted tracts, I. e., the 68.4 acre tract, the 20 acre wedge shaped tract, the 138 acre triangular shaped tract, and the 42 acre triangular shaped tract, which the Special Master apparently found to be the tracts over which the Plaintiffs had title.

The final deed between the brothers and the one which provides a crucial step in the resolution of the conflicting claims of title, as considered by both the Special Master and the District Court, is a deed dated May 2, 1922 from Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. and his wife to Christopher Grimshawe. By this deed the grantors conveyed to Christopher Grimshawe their interest "in and to the certain lands which the said C. Grimshawe had agreed to convey to W. A. Rexford, pursuant to an agreement dated August 16, 1912" but excepting therefrom "the lands embraced in a boundary survey made by General Erwin and others, surveyors, on the headwaters of the Chatooga River of 4,400 acres, more or less, which includes the former home of the said T. Grimshawe in the Whiteside Cove on the waters of the Chatooga River * * * which said boundary of 4,400 acres is reserved by the said T. Grimshawe, and wife, Bessie Grimshawe, * * * for their use and benefit and for the use and benefit of their heirs and assigns." ¹ In construing this deed, the Special Master found that Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. conveyed his "1/2 undivided interest for life" in all the property devised the two brothers by their father except for the former's interest in the 2,000 acres constituting the "home place," which Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. expressly reserved from the conveyance. The Special Master looked back to Christopher Grimshawe's two deeds to his brother, under which the former conveyed all his interest (I. e., a "1/2 undivided interest for life") in the 2,000 acre "home place" and found that by such deed Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. acquired Christopher's "1/2 undivided interest for life" in the "home place," thereby giving him the full life interest in such premises, and that, by Thomas Grimshawe, Jr.'s reservation in his deed of May 2, 1922, the latter had retained unimpaired his full life estate in the "home place," save for so much of it as he had conveyed earlier to M. Buchanan. He then found that when Christopher Grimshawe died in 1934 leaving Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. surviving, "the life estate held by Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. in the 2,000 acres of land acquired under the will of Thomas Grimshawe, Sr., and by deed from Christopher Grimshawe vested into a fee simple interest in said land" in favor of Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. Based on this finding, he concluded that the Plaintiffs, tracing their title through Thomas Grimshawe, Sr., had title to the tracts excepted by Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. in his conveyance of part of the "home place" to M. Buchanan by deed dated May 29, 1920, these excepted tracts being the property now in controversy. It is from this conclusion that the Government appealed to the District Court.

In reversing the Special Master, the District Court seems to begin by agreeing with the Special Master that the issue of record title itself to the several tracts in issue, as between the parties, turned on the construction of the devise by Thomas Grimshawe, Sr. to Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. and Christopher Grimshawe and of the deed of May 2, 1922 from Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. and wife to Christopher Grimshawe. It found, as did the Special Master, that the two devisees Thomas Grimshawe, Jr. and Christopher Grimshawe under the will of Thomas Grimshawe, Sr. each took not a fee simple title but merely a one-half undivided interest for life in the property devised. The District Court, though, went beyond the Special Master to find that each devisee took a one-half life estate, with a contingent remainder in fee and that this interest was "alienable" under the law of North Carolina. ² Following this theory, it held that, again under North Carolina law, any conveyance by one ...