Skaggs v. Prince

• Decision Date: 23 April 1928
• Docket Number: (No. 391.)
• Citation: 5 S.W.2d 927
• Parties: SKAGGS v. PRINCE et al.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

5 S.W.2d 927

SKAGGS v. PRINCE et al.

(No. 391.)

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

April 23, 1928.

Rehearing Denied May 21, 1928.

Appeal from Randolph Chancery Court; A. S. Irby, Chancellor.

Suit by W. L. Skaggs against Oscar Prince and others. Decree for defendants, and plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

John L. Bledsoe, of Pocahontas, for appellant.

Walter L. Pope, of Pocahontas, for appellees.

SMITH, J.

At the trial in the court below from which this appeal comes a voluminous record was made. Numerous pleadings were filed and a large amount of evidence was taken, but, stripped of all superfluities, the question involved is the correct location of the boundary line between tracts of land owned by appellant and appellee, respectively.

J. H. Skaggs owned a tract of land in Randolph county adjacent to Black river, incident to which was a ferry across that stream. Skaggs died childless and intestate in 1895 and was survived by his widow and six brothers and sisters. The land was an original acquisition, and a partition was made between the widow and these heirs, and the heirs received the part of the land to which the ferry was attached.

In 1897 a suit was brought by certain of these collateral heirs against the others, in which a partition was prayed among them of the portion of the J. H. Skaggs estate which they had received upon the partition of that estate with the widow of J. H. Skaggs.

A judgment ordering the partition of the lands among the collateral heirs was rendered in the Randolph circuit court, and B. B. Raglin was appointed commissioner to make the partition. Pursuant to this judgment Raglin, as commissioner, executed deeds to the collateral heirs in severalty to the lands assigned them, respectively, one of these deeds being to the plaintiff, W. L. Skaggs, and another to J. M. Skaggs. The lands assigned and deeded to these brothers of the intestate, J. H. Skaggs, were coterminous and were divided by a road known as the Skaggs' Ferry road, so that this road formed the east boundary line of the W. L. Skaggs land and the west boundary line of the J. M. Skaggs land and was referred to in the commissioner's deeds to them as constituting their east and west boundary lines, respectively.

J. M. Skaggs died intestate and was survived by two children, Mrs. Lavada Holman and Mrs. Rosa Webb. Mrs. Holman conveyed her interest in the land to her sister Mrs. Webb, who later conveyed the interest which she had purchased, as well as that which she had inherited, to Oscar Prince, who thus became the owner of the interest which J. M. Skaggs had taken upon the partition by the collateral heirs.

W. L. Skaggs brought this suit against Prince alleging the facts above stated, and made all persons whose interests have been herein referred to parties. In this suit he prayed the reformation of the deeds of the commissioner Raglin both to himself and to his intestate brother, J. M. Skaggs, alleging that both deeds were indefinite, in that the east boundary of one tract and the west boundary of the other was a road...