McCandless v. Honolulu Plantation Co.
| Decision Date | 16 November 1908 |
| Citation | 19 Haw. 239 |
| Parties | L. L. McCANDLESS v. HONOLULU PLANTATION COMPANY AND WOODLAWN FRUIT COMPANY, LIMITED. |
| Court | Hawaii Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HEREEXCEPTIONS FROM CIRCUIT COURT, FIRST CIRCUIT.
Syllabus by the Court
The findings of fact of a circuit court in a jury waived case cannot be reversed on exceptions where there is evidence on both sides and the issue turns upon the credibility of the witnesses.
When it appears in an action of ejectment that both parties claim title from the same grantor neither can take advantage of alleged defects in the chain of title prior to the common source.
A general exception to the decision of a court, jury waived, finding for the plaintiff, does not bring to the consideration of this court a possible defense disclosed by the evidence but not called to the attention of the trial court.
A. G. M. Robertson for plaintiff.
M. F. Prosser and R. B. Anderson ( Kinney & Marx on the brief) for defendants.
This is an action of ejectment for a small kuleana situated at Halawa, Oahu, in which, after a trial before a judge of the circuit court of the first circuit, jury being waived, the plaintiff obtained judgment for the restitution of the land with costs. Both parties claim under S. Kamaka, the defendants also claiming by adverse possession. The plaintiff's deed from Kamaka is dated September 17, 1901, and recorded September 24, 1901. This action was instituted February 7, 1902. At that time the defendants were in possession of the land but under a title not now relied upon. On August 5, 1902, there was placed on record a hitherto unrecorded deed of the property in question from S. M. Kamaka to James I. Dowsett dated January 13, 1883, and on August 27, 1902, one of the defendants obtained a lease of the property from The Dowsett Co., Ltd., successors in title of James I. Dowsett.
The main controversies in the case related to the authenticity of the deed from S. M. Kamaka to J. I. Dowsett and to the question of adverse possession. Upon the first point the testimony was conflicting. Kamaka, now blind and a leper on Molokai, denied that he had ever executed the deed to Dowsett or that he ever signed his name S. M. Kamaka, and at the close of the defendant's case the deed of 1883, which had been admitted in evidence conditionally, was struck from the evidence upon motion, the trial judge ruling that it had not been proven to be Kamaka's deed. To strike the deed from the evidence entirely was technically error, as not only were there many improbabilities and inconsistencies in Kamaka's story to affect his credibility, but there was considerable circumstantial evidence in support of the execution of the deed which should have gone to a jury had there been one. But we cannot hold this prejudicial when the trial judge himself was the judge of the ultimate facts, and the question being mainly that of the credibility of a witness we would not be justified in reversing the judgment upon this ground.
Nor is there anything in the record which would justify a reversal of the judgment on the ground that adverse possession had been established. The evidence shows that Kamaka had exercised no possession or control over the land for more than the statutory period, but this is by no means decisive. The evidence as to the beginning of the possession of tenants claiming under Dowsett is uncertain as to dates, and in so far as it is sought to fix the time prior to 1883 is inconsistent with the theory of Dowsett's acquisition of interest at that time. A...
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Hewahewa v. Lalakea
...by the clerk. By an unbroken line of decisions from Briggs v. Briggs, 4 Haw. 448, decided in 1882, to the case of McCandless v. Honolulu Plantation Co., 19 Haw. 239, decided in November, 1908, this court has uniformly refused to set aside the decision of a circuit judge, jury waived, where ......