Masten v. Olcott

• Decision Date: 19 January 1886
• Citation: Masten v. Olcott, 101 N.Y. 152, 4 N.E. 274 (N.Y. 1886)
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: THEODORE V. MASTEN, Respondent, v. ADELAIDE OLCOTT et al., Appellants.

101 N.Y. 152

4 N.E. 274

MASTEN

v.OLCOTT and another.¹

Court of Appeals of New York.

Filed January 19, 1886.

RUGER, C. J., dissenting.

T. A. Read, for appellants.

T. F. Bush, for respondent.

ANDREWS, J.

The complaint in the partition suit described the premises sought to be partitioned as being part of the lot ‘known as the ‘Saw-mill Lot;’ and, following this designation, courses and distances were given, and the description concludes: ‘Which said premises are known as the ‘Old Saw-mill Lot.”The saw-mill lot, as known and occupied at the time, was separated from the lot on the south, occupied by the plaintiff, by a heavy stone wall erected in 1820.The premises in controversy comprise about an acre of land, in a triangular form, south of and adjacent to the stone wall, which has been inclosed and occupied as part of the plaintiff's lot by him and his predecessors in title from about the year 1806.In that year, Johannes Masten conveyed to Jacob Masten and others a lot described in the deed by the same description contained in the complaint in partition, and what was then known as the ‘Saw-mill Lot’ embraced the premises now in controversy.But soon after that conveyance, an arrangement was entered into between the Mastens and the owner of the lot next south of the saw-mill lot, to ‘square the line’ between the lots, by which the line was located where the stone wall was subsequently built.Before the erection of the stone wall, and soon after the arrangement referred to, a wood fence was built on the same line by the owner of the plaintiff's lot.From that time to the commencement of the partition proceedings, in 1873, a period of more than 60 years, the respective lots had been occupied according to the line fixed in 1806, and when that action was commenced, the stone wall had been for more than 50 years the division fence between the lots.

The plaintiff has an unquestionable legal title to the premises in controversy, unless he is concluded from asserting such title by the judgment and sale in the partition action, in which he was made a partydefendant.It is claimed on the part of the defendant, that, as the land in controversy is included within the lines mentioned in the description in the partition proceedings, and was in fact originally a part of the saw-mill lot, the plaintiff, if he claimed the title thereto, was bound to set up his title in the partition action, and, having failed to do so, the judgment and sale therein is conclusive against any subsequent assertion of such title.This would be true on the assumption that it was adjudged in that action that the premises owned in common, and of which partition was decreed, embraced the part of the original saw-mill lot now in controversy.

The parties to a partition suit are bound by the judgment therein, whether their interests were rightly stated or not, and an adjudication that they were tenants in common of the land adjudged to be partitioned, concludes a party to the action, served with the process, although he did not appear, and although his title to a part of the land partitioned was in severalty.This was a fact he was bound to put in issue, and have determined on the trial.Jordan v. Van Epps, 85 N. Y. 427;Cook v. Allen, 2 Mass. 462.It comes, therefore, to the question whether the judgment and sale in the partition action did embrace the part of the original saw-mill lot now claimed by the plaintiff.A survey according to the metes and bounds and courses and distances in the description, includes these premises.But the description by courses and distances is not the whole of the description in the partition proceedings.It begins by declaring that the premises sought to be partitioned are ‘known as the ‘Saw-mill Lot.”It is clear beyond controversy that the lot known as the ‘Saw-mill Lot’ when the partition action was commenced, and for 50 years prior to that time, was north of the stone wall.The stone wall was the line marked on the ground dividing the two lots.It had been located as the south line of the mill lot by agreement between the owners of the two lots, and had been acquiesced in as the true line for all that long period.The conveyances of the plaintiff's lot, from 1815, had bounded it on the north by the saw-mill lot, or ‘Masten's Saw-mill Lot,’ and the grantees understood that their grants carried them to the stone wall.Jacob Masten, who died in 1852, and under whose will the plaintiffs in the partition suit claimed, was a party to the location of the line in 1806, and he devised the saw-mill lot as the premises ‘known as the ‘Old Saw-mill Premises.”It is apparent that he must have intended the premises north of the stone wall, and that it was these premises which were known to him at that time as the saw-mill premises, and of which the parties to the partition were tenants in common.The rule for the construction of deeds, established to effectuate the intention of the parties, authorized the rejection of false particulars in the description of the granted premises, and subordinates the less material facts to the more certain and material ones where there is inconsistency.Brookman v. Kurzman, 94 N. Y. 272, and cases cited.Thus, monuments generally control courses and distances, because grants are supposed to be made with reference to an actual view of the premises by the parties thereto.Wendell v. People, 8 Wend. 190.It cannot be doubted that the parties to the partition action, on reading the description in the complaint, would locate the land by reference to the actual inclosure of the saw-mill property, rather than by the courses and distances, which could only be located by a survey, the monuments mentioned having been lost or destroyed; and so as to a purchaser on a partition sale.

If the devisees under the will of Jacob Masten had conveyed by the same description contained in the complaint in the partition suit, could the grantee have claimed that the grant was intended to cover the premises in controversy?If a grantee in a voluntary conveyance could not do so, a purchaser on a partition sale stands in no better positin.We think the words “known as the Saw-mill Lot,” in the description in the...