Mullins Lumber Co. v. Williamson & Brown Land & Lumber Co.
| Decision Date | 16 October 1917 |
| Docket Number | 1533. |
| Citation | 246 F. 232 |
| Parties | MULLINS LUMBER CO. v. WILLIAMSON & BROWN LAND & LUMBER CO. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
W. F Stevenson, of Cheraw, S.C., and Hoyt McMillan, of Mullins S.C., for plaintiff in error.
F. L Willcox, of Florence, S.C. (Willcox & Willcox, of Florence S.C., on the brief), for defendant in error.
Before PRITCHARD and WOODS, Circuit Judges, and DAYTON, District judge.
In this action for damages for cutting timber the plaintiff, Williamson & Brown Land & Lumber Company, alleged and claimed $5,000 actual and punitive damages. The verdict was in favor of the plaintiff for $1,256. The defendant raises in this court for the first time the point that the court was without jurisdiction, because the evidence of the plaintiff showed that the value of the timber cut and used by the defendant did not amount to $3,000. It is true that the actual damages according to the testimony most favorable to the plaintiff were above $2,385; and the court instructed the jury that there was no such evidence of willfulness and wantonness as would support a verdict for punitive damages. But all this is not conclusive of a failure of jurisdiction. The rule is that the plaintiff's claim with respect to the value of the property taken or the amount of damages inflicted through the defendant's wrongful act measures for jurisdictional purposes the value of the matter in controversy, even though the complaint shows that a perfect defense might be made to sufficient amount of the claim to reduce it below the jurisdictional amount, unless it appears as a matter of law from inspection of the complaint that it is not possible for the plaintiff to recover the jurisdictional amount, or from the evidence at the trial that the value of the property involved or the damages claimed had been magnified fraudulently in the declaration so as to reach the jurisdictional amount. Smithers v. Smith, 204 U.S. 632, 27 Sup.Ct. 297, 51 L.Ed. 656.
While the evidence in this case fell short of establishing the amount of damages claimed, an inspection of the complaint does not show that recovery of the amount claimed was not possible, nor does it appear from the evidence that actual and punitive damages to the amount of $5,000 was not claimed in good faith. It would be a great hardship on the plaintiff for an appellate court to hold that, in order to reach the jurisdictional amount, he had fraudulently raised his claim, when the question had not been made in the District Court and he had had no opportunity to meet the charge on the trial. For an appellate court to take such action the fraud should affirmatively appear from the testimony beyond doubt. It follows that the cause cannot be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.
The cutting and appropriation by the defendant of timber from the land described in the complaint not being denied, the real issue at the trial was whether the plaintiff had a title derived from Wilson Lewis, the common source, covering the land in dispute, superior to the defendant's junior title. The last link in the plaintiff's chain of title was a deed of October 28, 1907, from Cape Fear Lumber Company to the plaintiff, which was invalid because not attested by witnesses. On September 9, 1910, the grantor executed and attached to the original deed an instrument under its seal, by which it recited the defect in the original deed and undertook to re-execute it in these words:
'In consideration of the premises, Cape Fear Lumber Company has caused this indenture to be re-executed this day and year above written.'
It seems too clear for discussion that this was a valid execution of the original document, in form a conveyance giving it effect at the date of the last execution. 13 Cyc. 553.
The defendant's junior title covered the land in dispute, and an important question of fact was whether this description in the deed from Wilson Lewis to S.W. Morrison, under which plaintiff claimed, embraced the land in dispute:
The surveyors who testified differed as to the true lines in the plat attached to the deed and in the location of the land conveyed by it.
On this description the plaintiff claimed to the run of Black creek. The defendant,...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
St Paul Mercury Indemnity Co v. Red Cab Co
...15 Interstate B. & L. Ass'n v. Edgefield Hotel Co., C.C., 109 F. 692; Armstrong v. Walters, D.C., 219 F. 320; Mullins Lumber Co. v. Williamson Land Co., 4 Cir., 246 F. 232. 16 Williams v. Nottawa, supra; Barry v. Edmunds, supra; Vance v. Vandercook Co., 170 U.S. 468, 18 S.Ct. 645, 42 L.Ed. ......
-
Mullins Lumber Co. v. Williamson & Brown Land & Lumber Co.
...acres in dispute. This court reversed the judgment in favor of the plaintiff for error in the instruction of the trial court on that issue. 246 F. 232. [1] On the second trial jury again found for the plaintiff, and the case is here on assignments of error in the exclusion of testimony, and......