Rucker v. Jackson

• Decision Date: 28 November 1912
• Parties: RUCKER v. JACKSON ET AL.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

60 So. 139

180 Ala. 109

RUCKER v. JACKSON ET AL.

Supreme Court of Alabama

November 28, 1912

Appeal from Law and Equity Court, Walker County; T. L. Sowell Judge.

Bill by Helen Jackson and others against E. W. Rucker. Decree for complainants, and defendant appeals. Reversed and rendered.

George L. Smith, of Birmingham, for appellant.

M. B McCollum, of Jasper, for appellees.

SAYRE J.

Appellees filed the bill in this case under the statute to settle land titles. They describe themselves as the widow, children, and heirs at law of Jonathan Jackson, deceased, under whom they claim, and so they are. Jonathan Jackson was a brother of David Jackson, who had got a patent to the land in question from the government of the United States in 1860. Defendant in his answer claimed only the minerals upon and under the land by virtue of a deed from P. M. Long, who had a deed from Martha Douglas, both executed in the interval between the filings, respectively, of the bill and answer, and showed that she was the sole heir at law of David, the patentee; her title being correctly traced by the proof through a number of devolutions which will be stated. For the purpose, perhaps of showing that his claim of title, as stated in his answer, was no mere afterthought, and so to avoid any discrediting conception of his case that might arise from his acquisition of title pending the suit, defendant in his proof showed that he had claimed the land for more than twenty years under a deed from B. M. Long and others, by the tax books that he had paid taxes since 1890--the tax records for previous years had been destroyed by fire--and that for a time within the period of his asserted ownership his licensee had cut timber for cross-ties from the land.

He recognized the fact, however, that this was an insufficient showing of title, because he was unable to trace by competent evidence title from David Jackson into his grantors of an earlier time, and so procured and relied in defense upon the title stated in his answer. He might have defeated an action of ejectment on a good title so acquired (Etowah Mining Co. v. Carlisle, 127 Ala. 663, 29 So. 7), and the fact that his acquisition of title had been so timed affords no sufficient reason why he should not be allowed to prevail in the form of equity on proof of a title valid in every other respect.

It was also not only proper but necessary, that the title so acquired and relied upon should be stated in the answer. The nature and purpose of the proceeding is such as to require an adjudication of the rights and claims of the parties at the time of the rendition of the decree. Not only is it the general rule of equity practice that matters proper for consideration which have occurred since the filing of the bill may be stated in the answer, but the statute governing the procedure of such causes contemplates that the answer shall contain a statement of the title relied upon by the defendant from whatsoever source or at whatsoever time acquired.

The statute authorizes a bill like this to be filed by any person in the peaceable possession of lands, whether actual or constructive, claiming to own the same. Where neither party has actual possession, necessarily the issue becomes one of title, drawing to it constructive possession, and with the burden upon complainant to show title in order to maintain his bill, and this rule applies in this case, for, when the bill was filed, no one was in possession of the land. Nor has there ever been any such actual possession as would affect the title. The witnesses with one accord say that the property has never been occupied, cultivated, or improved; that it is and has been a wild woodland.

It appears in the testimony of several witnesses, some of the complainants and their relatives, that prior to 1882, at which time Rucker, the defendant, took his deed from B. M. Long and others, one of them cut two trees for rails by permission of Jonathan Jackson, another some dead trees for firewood, that while upon the land on one occasion Jonathan offered to sell the land to another, a stranger to the family, and in the most general and indefinite way conceivable they say that he claimed to own it. There is nothing approximating or even remotely approaching competent and satisfactory evidence of any continuous adverse holding by any one of any part of this land. The rare and widely separated acts to which we have referred, no matter how clearly they may have indicated a purpose to claim title and assert dominion over the property, do not satisfy the law of title by adverse possession and the statute of limitation. They cannot be regarded as anything more than acts of trespass.

Nor is the claim of ownership or the intention to assert title against the true owner of any consequence in the absence of demonstration by acts...