Loud v. Barnes

• Decision Date: 03 September 1891
• Parties: LOUD v. BARNES et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

154 Mass. 344

28 N.E. 271

LOUD v. BARNES et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Plymouth.

September 3, 1891

COUNSEL

H.H. Pratt, for plaintiff.

J.M. & T.C. Day, for defendants.

OPINION

LATHROP J.

This is a bill in equity to reform a deed. The case was heard by a single justice of the superior court, who entered a decree dismissing the bill, and the case comes before us on an appeal by the plaintiff, the evidence being reported in full. On January 19, 1888, the plaintiff conveyed by a warranty deed to the first-named defendant and his wife "a certain lot of land, with the buildings thereon, lying on the south side of Centre avenue, in Abington, containing twenty-five square rods, more or less, bounded and described as follows, viz.: Beginning on said street at the north-east corner of land of the heirs of the late Jesse E. Keith, and running thence easterly with said street about eight rods thence south, twenty-five degrees west, about ten rods and twenty-four links, to land of the heirs of Asaph Dunbar thence by said Dunbar land north, sixty-eight degrees west about eight rods, to land of Joseph G. and Sophia N. Lowe thence north, twenty-five degrees east, by land of said Lowe's and said Keith's heirs, to the first corner." The deed further describes the land as being the same premises conveyed to the grantor by Mary L. Richmond by deed dated August 5, 1873. After the conveyance by Richmond, and before the deed by the plaintiff to the defendants, one Giles, claiming to own the land, put up a building, used as a market, on Centre avenue, and on the land covered by the deed. The plaintiff seeks to have the deed reformed by having the northerly boundary line described as running, from the point of beginning, "easterly, with said street and land of Thomas F. Giles and others, about eight rods," and by having the easterly line described as running "south, twenty-five degrees west, two rods and twenty-four links, to land of the heirs of Asaph Dunbar."

It is clear that the bill cannot be maintained unless there was a mistake common to all the parties to the deed. Page v Higgins, 150 Mass. 27, 22 N.E. 63. The description of the northerly line in the deed corresponds exactly with the description of the same line in the deed from Richmond to the plaintiff. The only ground for contending that there was a common mistake is that the plaintiff's evidence tends to show that the bounds of the land were pointed out by the plaintiff to the first-named defendant, and that these...