Ralph v. Clifford

• Decision Date: 11 February 1916
• Citation: 224 Mass. 58,112 N.E. 482
• Parties: RALPH et al. v. CLIFFORD et al.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

224 Mass. 58

112 N.E. 482

RALPH et al.

v.CLIFFORD et al.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Bristol.

Feb. 11, 1916.

Appeal from Superior Court, Bristol County.

Bill in euqity by Charles W. Ralph and others against Oren W. Clifford and others. Decree for plaintiffs, and they appeal. Affirmed.

John W. Cummings, Charles R. Cummings, and Jas. Little, all of Fall River, for appellants.

Frank B. Fox, of Taunton, for appellees.

CROSBY, J.

This is a bill in equity brought to restrain the defendants from obstructing an alleged private street. The land now owned by the plaintiffs and by the defendants respectively formerly was included in a larger tract, all of which was owned by one Kendall, and was bounded on the south by a way known as Richards avenue, in North Attleborough. On May 30, 1881, Kendall by deed sold to Ellen Miller a lot of land bounded 50 feet by Richards avenue and 150 feet deep. The plaintiffs are the successors in title to an interest in this lot.

The defendant, Annie M. Clifford, is the owner of a parcel of land adjoining the plaintiffs' lot on the west, and obtained title thereto by deed from one Lewis dated October 1, 1901. The plaintiffs claim a right of way over a strip of land 40 feet wide owned by the defendants along the westerly side of the lot owned by them and extending from Richards avenue northerly to Church street.

The case was referred to a master who has found that:

‘At the time Kendall sold to Ellen Miller he had and showed to her, or her agent, and to at least one other person, a plan or blueprint which was marked or traced with a 40-foot street running northerly from Richards avenue, where the locus in dispute is situated. In this deed to her he described the premises as ‘beginning at the corner of a street.’ That is the only reference in the deed to a street. There is no evidence of any plan now existing showing any street line northerly from Richards avenue by these premises.'

The master also has found that there was no fence on the street line between the strip in dispute and Richards avenue and from the appearance of the surface of the ground no indication of a street; that there was no driveway over the disputed strip from Richards avenue to Church street; that there are no boundaries, stakes or marks indicating a street, and there never have been any such boundaries ‘excepting the placing of two posts about 40 feet apart in the northerly line of Richards avenue by Kendall before the sale to Miller, which posts remained there a short time only’; that no such posts were there when the trustees under the will of Kendall conveyed the premises now owned by the defendant, Annie M. Clifford, and there is nothing to indicate a street or way, and no evidence of any use of the Clifford premises northerly of a gate in the fence in the westerly line of the plaintiffs' lot, the southerly end of which gate is 80 feet northerly of Richards avenue.

[1] When a grantor conveys land bounded on a street or way he and those claiming under him are estopped to deny the existence of such street or way, and the right of the grantee and his successors in title therein includes the entire length of the way as then actually laid out or clearly defined.

This is the contention of the plaintiffs, and it is fully sustained by the authorities and applies as well to a contemplated way if clearly indicated, as to an existing street. Parker v. Smith, 17 Mass. 413, 9 Am. Dec. 157;Tufts v. Charlestown, 2 Gray, 272;Stetson v. Dow, 16 Gray, 372; Tobey v. Taunton, 11. Mass. 404; Foley v. McCarthy, 157 Mass. 474, 32 N. E. 669.

Although the master finds ‘that at the time Kendall sold to Ellen Miller he had, and showed to her, * * * and to at least one other person, a plan or blueprint which was marked or traced with a 40-foot street...