Laney v. Arkansas Real Estate Co., 5-2493

• Decision Date: 20 November 1961
• Docket Number: No. 5-2493,5-2493
• Parties: Walter H. LANEY et al., Appellants, v. ARKANSAS REAL ESTATE COMPANY, Inc. et al., Appellees.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

Page 911

350 S.W.2d 911

234 Ark. 187

Walter H. LANEY et al., Appellants, v. ARKANSAS REAL ESTATE COMPANY, Inc. et al., Appellees.

No. 5-2493.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

Nov. 20, 1961.

Gaughan & Laney, Camden, for appellants.

Moses, McClellan, Arnold, Owen & McDermott and James R. Howard, Little Rock, for appellees.

GEORGE ROSE SMITH, Justice.

This is a suit by the appellants, the four children of W. H. Laney, to quiet their title to a tract of about 70 acres lying near the south edge of the city of Little Rock. They claim title (a) under two tax deeds which their father obtained from the state in 1941 and 1944 and (b) by adverse possession. The appellees, Arkansas Real Estate Company, Inc., and Arkansas Warehouse Corporation, rely upon quitclaim deeds by which they acquired the record title to the land in 1956 and 1957. The chancellor found the tax deeds to be invalid, for want of a good description, and held that the appellants had proved title by adverse possession only to the north seven acres of the tract. In appealing from that decree the appellants insist that they established good title to the entire tract.

The tract is a rectangle, about a half mile by a quarter mile in size, with its longer direction running north and south. A railroad right-of-way runs along the northern boundary and cuts off the northwest corner of the rectangle.

The chancellor's finding that the appellants have acquired title to the north seven acres is amply supported by the proof and has not been challenged by cross appeal. This part of the land was occupied by tenants of the Laneys for more than ten years, beginning in about 1944. The principal tenant, Bell, lived in a small house on this parcel from about 1945 until his death in 1952. Bell and his successors raised cotton and vegetables during the years of their occupancy. The proof shows that this north seven acres was completely enclosed, the fence along its southern boundary being an interior cross fence that divided the entire 70-acre tract into two parts.

In this court the dispute concerns the southern part of the tract. The appellants' father, W. H. Laney, kept cattle and horses on this part of the land, though perhaps not continuously, from about 1944 until his death in 1951. Small scattered fields were cultivated from time to time, but not for a continuous period of seven years. The chancellor evidently concluded that the land now in controversy had not been physically occupied, in its entirety, by the Laneys and their tenants for a sufficient length of time to vest title by adverse possession.

We think the chancellor overlooked the fact that, according to the decided weight of the evidence, the parcel now in question was continuously enclosed by fences from about 1943 until about 1953. When this enclosure of the land is considered along with the acts of dominion exerted by the Laneys and their tenants all the elements of adverse possession are established.

Several of the Laneys' former tenants and employees testified in the case. Frank Hardester worked for W. H. Laney for several years. In 1942 or 1943 he helped build the west...