Platt v. Bente
| Decision Date | 30 June 1887 |
| Court | New Jersey Supreme Court |
| Parties | PLATT v. BENTE and others. |
(Syllabus by the Court.)
In error to Union circuit.
T. D. Hodges, for plaintiff in error. Gilhooly & Marsh, for defendant.
This cause was tried before Mr. Justice VAN SYCKEL at the Union circuit, a jury being waived. It involved the title to a long wedge-shaped strip of land in the city of Elizabeth. The plaintiff and defendant owned adjoining lots, each fronting 30 feet on Fay avenue, and running back a distance of 150 feet to the road of New Jersey Railroad & Transportation Company. The point of division of these lots on Fay avenue is not in dispute. The point of division on the railroad is the ground of contest. Bente, the plaintiff below, whose title is the earlier, has a deed which calls for a line running from Fay avenue at right angles to said avenue. A line run at right angles to Fay avenue will include within the description in plaintiff's deed the locus in quo. The defendant's contention is that this call for a line running at right angles to Fay avenue is controlled by a subsequent call in the plaintiff's deed for a distance of 30 feet.
To understand the significance of this point it is necessary to have in mind the following facts: Both the lots of plaintiff and defendant belonged to one William J. Patterson. He bought 50 feet on Fay avenue from one Prudence Allen in 1872, who had bought from Otis Woodruff in the same year. Patterson bought, also in 1872, an additional strip of 10 feet, fronting on Fay avenue, from Otis Woodruff. He then owned a lot 60 feet in width on Fay avenue, and running back 150 feet, to the railroad. Fay avenue runs nearly east and west. The westerly line of this lot was a well-established line known as "Fay and Woodruff Dividing Line," and called for in the deeds as the most westerly line of Otis Woodruff's land. This line does not run at right angles to Fay avenue, but its end on the railroad is three feet six inches distant westward from the point which it would have reached had it run at right angles. So it is perceived that a lot fronting 30 feet or 60 feet on Fay avenue, and bounded on the west by this Woodruff line, which does not run at right angles, and on the east by a line which runs at right angles to Fay avenue, would, on reaching the railroad, have a width of 33 feet 6 inches or 63 feet 6 inches.
William J. Patterson, owning this lot 60 feet in width on Fay avenue, and 63 feet...
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...Canton Cotton Co., 70 Miss. 462, 12 So. 147; Bartlett Land Co. v. Saunders, 103 U.S. 316; Wilson v. Indoes, 6 Gill 121 (Md.); Platt v. Bente, 49 N.J.L. 679, 10 M. 283; Page v. Whatly, 162 Ala. 473, 50 So. 116. The board of supervisors could add territory to a consolidated school district wh......
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Joffe v. Gliksman, 148/696.
...line will control the line although it changes the distance of the course from the end of the line to the next monument. Platt v. Bente, 49 N.J.L. 679, 10 A. 283. When there is a latent ambiguity in the description contained in the deed, or a doubt as to the true location of the lines evide......
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McCann v. McCarthy
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