Roberts v. Chadwick

• Decision Date: 10 December 1946
• Docket Number: No. 11695.,11695.
• Citation: 158 F.2d 374
• Parties: ROBERTS v. CHADWICK et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

158 F.2d 374 (1946)

ROBERTS v. CHADWICK et al.

No. 11695.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

December 10, 1946.

J. N. Saye, of Longview, Tex., for appellant.

Thomas Fletcher, of Houston, Tex., and Thos. B. Ramey, of Tyler, Tex., for appellees.

Before SIBLEY, WALLER, and LEE, Circuit Judges.

LEE, Circuit Judge.

D. D. Chadwick and his wife, Anna, owned 750 acres of land in Panola County, Texas, an alleged 200 acres of which prior to 1936 they had set off as their homestead. In 1936 they conveyed the land not set off to three of their children, Noble, Gladys, and Matylu Chadwick. Soon after, D. D. Chadwick died. In April, 1940, Noble, Gladys, and Matylu Chadwick, joined by their mother, Mrs. Anna Chadwick, conveyed the nonhomestead acres, less a few acres not here in dispute, to A. D. Roberts and his wife, Betsy. During the same month, A. D. Roberts employed one Land to survey the acreage he had acquired and the acreage in the Chadwick homestead. In surveying the original Chadwick 750 acres, Land located with bearing trees and iron stakes the division line between the Chadwick homestead land on the south and the Roberts land on the north. The correctness of the location of this line is the matter in dispute in this suit. Prior to the Land Survey neither party knew the correct location of the boundary line. In the preparation of the survey the Chadwicks cooperated with Land, and after the work was completed the Robertses furnished the Chadwicks with a plat of the survey showing the division line. The Robertses immediately built a fence on this line, and the respective parties, by their use of the land up to and on their side of the fence, recognized it as the common boundary between their respective estates. As established, there was set off to the Robertses 550 acres, more or less, north of the division line and to the Chadwicks 200 acres south of it.

In a deed to plaintiff dated 1940, conveying a half interest in a tract not here involved, Roberts referred to the line established by Land as the north boundary of the Chadwick homestead. In a deed reconveying the same interest to A. D. Roberts, dated October, 1941, plaintiff referred to the same line. Later, in another deed also covering land not here in dispute, dated February, 1942, A. D. Roberts referred to the line established by Land as the south boundary line of a "tract of land purchased by A. D. Roberts from the Chadwick heirs."

In 1944, A. D. Roberts employed a second surveyor, one Klotz, to resurvey the property he had acquired from the Chadwicks in April, 1940. Klotz fixed the division line farther south than the line marked by Land. The new line located 35.98 acres of the original 200-acre Chadwick homestead as a part of the land A. D. Roberts purchased from the Chadwicks. On January 3, 1945, A. D. Roberts and his wife, Betsy, conveyed this 35.98 acres to plaintiff, a resident and citizen of Caddo Parish, Louisiana.

Alleging diversity of citizenship and jurisdictional amount, plaintiff brought this suit against the Chadwicks, residents and citizens of Panola County, Texas, to recover title and possession of the 35.98 acres. The Union Producing Company, holding oil, gas, and mineral leases covering the 35.98 acres, intervened as party defendant. The defendants and intervenor asserted in defense that an agreement between A. D. Roberts and the defendants concerning the line run by Surveyor Land estopped the privies in blood and estate of A. D. Roberts from denying the division line.

At the close of the evidence, in a jury trial, upon the motion of the...