Steinman v. Maier

• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: PER CURIAM
• Citation: Steinman v. Maier, 427 A.2d 828, 179 Conn. 574 (Conn. 1980)
• Decision Date: 05 February 1980
• Parties: John F. STEINMAN v. Evelyn B. MAIER, Executrix. (ESTATE of Wilbur BEEBE) * et al. (two cases).

Page 828

427 A.2d 828

179 Conn. 574

John F. STEINMAN v. Evelyn B. MAIER, Executrix (ESTATE of Wilbur BEEBE) ^* et al. (two cases).

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued Dec. 6, 1979.

Decided Feb. 5, 1980.

Joseph W. Doherty, Waterbury, with whom, on the brief, was William J. St. John, Jr., Waterbury, for appellant (plaintiff).

W. Fielding Secor, Waterbury, with whom were Pamela M. Taylor, Waterbury, and, on the brief, Wilder G. Gleason, Waterbury, for appellee.

Before LOISELLE, BOGDANSKI, PETERS, PARSKEY and WRIGHT, JJ.

PER CURIAM.

The plaintiff and the defendants owned adjoining parcels of land in the town of Middlebury, the plaintiff's property being situated west of the defendants' property. The plaintiff, claiming that the common boundary between the properties was lost, brought an action pursuant to General Statutes § 47-34 to establish this boundary and to quiet title to the boundary as so established. Judgment was rendered for the defendants on the ground that the plaintiff's claims were not supported by the evidence.

The disputed area consists of a rectangular piece of land located along the southerly boundary of the adjoining properties. The plaintiff claimed that he owned approximately 23 acres of land and that the lost boundary was located along the easterly line of the rectangular piece. The burden was on the plaintiff to fix this location. Velsmid v. Nelson, 175 Conn. 221, 224, 397 A.2d 113 (1978); Barrs v. Zukowski, 148 Conn. 158, 165, 169 A.2d 23 (1961). To establish his boundary the plaintiff offered a series of deeds and a number of sketches prepared from these deeds by a civil engineer. These offers sought to establish the claimed boundary by showing that the plaintiff owned the acreage which he claimed. The trial court admitted the evidence but found it deficient in several respects. None of the plaintiff's evidence was supported either by a survey or by a qualified title search, and, as a rule, the designation of unsurveyed acreage contained in old deeds is quite unreliable. ¹ Furthermore, one of the parcels through which the plaintiff claimed title decreased substantially as a result of a relocation of an old road, but no evidence was offered to establish either the original location of the road or the time of the relocation. Finally, the plaintiff's sketches did not agree with maps prepared by certified surveyors which appear in pertinent land records of Middlebury and Waterbury.

Because of these deficiencies, the trial court deemed the plaintiff's evidence insufficient to sustain the burden of fixing the location of the lost boundary. Although the plaintiff's evidence was not directly contradicted by other evidence, the trial court was not bound to accept it at face value. Hartford Electric Light Co. v. Levitz, 173 Conn. 15, 16, 376 A.2d 381 (1977). The sifting and weighing of evidence is...