Lackey v. Hamlet City Bd. of Ed.

• Decision Date: 02 May 1962
• Docket Number: No. 451,451
• Citation: 125 S.E.2d 343,257 N.C. 78
• Parties: Thomas H. LACKEY; Ell A. Lackey; John C. Lackey and wife, Helen Lackey; Annie Louise Lackey; and Richard F. Lackey v. The HAMLET CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION and The Town of Hamlet.
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Page 343

125 S.E.2d 343

257 N.C. 78

Thomas H. LACKEY; Ell A. Lackey; John C. Lackey and wife, Helen Lackey; Annie Louise Lackey; and Richard F. Lackey v. The HAMLET CITY BOARD OF EDUCATION and The Town of Hamlet.

No. 451

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

May 2, 1962

A. A. Reaves, Hamlet, and Bynum & Bynum, Rockingham, for defendant appellant, Hamlet City Board of Education.

Jones & Jones, Rockingham, for plaintiff appellees.

PARKER, Justice.

It seems clear from the stipulations and agreed facts, as well as from the complaint and answer of the Hamlet City Board of Education, that E. A. Lackey and wife, Ella M. Lackey, conveyed one lot of land to the School Trustees for the town of Hamlet, their successors and assigns, by deed dated 3 February 1903, and another lot of land to the same grantees, their successors and assigns, by deed dated 27 June 1903, although the description of the lots conveyed by the deeds is identical. We are fortified in our assumption by the fact that the resolution adopted by the Hamlet City Board of Education on 7 March 1961, which is set forth verbatim in the stipulations and agreed facts, directed the attorneys of the Hamlet Administrative School Unit 'to sell those two tracts of land described in those two deeds recorded in Book SSS at pages 599 and 600, respectively, Richmond County Registry.'

The stipulations and agreed facts state that E. A. Lackey and wife, Ella M. Lackey, executed and delivered a deed dated 27 June 1903 to the School Trustees for the town of Hamlet, which deed is attached to the stipulations and agreed facts and made a part thereof, but the deed so attached is the deed from E. A. Lackey and wife, Ella M. Lackey, dated 3 February 1903. According to the stipulations and agreed facts, the school building was erected on the lot of land conveyed by the deed dated 3 February 1903, and that is the lot of land that the Hamlet City Board of Education is now trying to sell. The stipulations and agreed facts do not state that they are trying to sell the lot of land conveyed by the deed dated 27 June 1903, though the resolution of the Hamlet City Board of Education states two tracts of land were to be sold. The stipulations and agreed facts state nothing as to what use, if any, has been made by the grantees of the lot of land conveyed by the deed dated 27 June 1903. A different factual situation may exist as to the use by the grantees of the lot of land conveyed by the deed date 27 June 1903 from the use by them of the lot of land conveyed by the deed dated 3 February 1903.

The judgment adjudges that plaintiffs by reason of the reverter provision in the deed dated 27 June 1903 are the owners in fee and entitled to the possession of the lot of land described...