Stewart v. Carleton

• Decision Date: 29 January 1875
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: William Stewart v. Israel E. Carleton

31 Mich. 270

William Stewart v. Israel E. Carleton

Supreme Court of Michigan

January 29, 1875

Heard January 26, 1875

Appeal in Chancery from St. Clair Circuit.

Decree affirmed, with costs.

Frank Whipple and A. E. Chadwick, for complainant.

Atkinson Bros., for defendant.

Campbell J. Graves, Ch. J., and Cooley, J., concurred. Christiancy J., did not sit in this case.

OPINION

Campbell, J.:

The object of the bill in this case is to rectify the boundaries and remove a cloud on the title of a portion of a lot of land owned by complainant in Port Huron.

The entire lot of complainant is a parcel of land formerly owned by Beard and Haynes, and the easterly end slopes downward to a piece of somewhat lower ground, concerning which the difficulty seems to have arisen. In January, 1856, Beard and Haynes agreed to sell to the Port Huron & Milwaukee Railroad Company the eastern part of a larger tract of land which they then owned (and of which the premises in dispute are a part), and in the contract the western boundary of the railroad tract was to be bounded "by the slope of the hill." A fence was built then or previously, which ran along the base of the slope, and which complainant claims was the line of the tract in question. In July, 1856, Beard and Haynes, at the request of the company, and in pursuance of the contract, executed a deed, which they were assured by the company's agent and engineer was in conformity with the contract, whereby the western boundary was fixed at four hundred and twenty feet from the easterly line of section fifteen, of which the tract was a part. The reason given for mentioning distances was, that the company preferred an exact measurement; and the parties, when they conveyed, were assured that the actual survey put the line where they had agreed it should be, at the fence, or a trifle east of it.

This fence continued undisturbed, and coincided in direction with the line of railroad lands bought of adjoining owners.

In August, 1856, the land west of the fence was conveyed to complainant's grantors, and in the deed was described, not by metes and bounds, but by adjoining property, and the easterly line was defined as "the line of lands sold by said Beard and Haynes to the Port Huron & Milwaukee Railroad Company."

In October, 1871, Carleton, the defendant, obtained a deed from the Port Huron & Lake Michigan Railroad Company(which appears to have purchased the property of the Port Huron & Milwaukee Railroad), and in that deed the land he bought was described as bounded "On the west by the west line of said railroad company's lands; the same being a line parallel with, and four hundred and twenty feet distant west from the east line of said section fifteen." Since that time Carleton has asserted ownership over the tract in dispute, by various acts not acquiesced in by complainant, but has not fenced it separately, nor defined his own exact boundary by any very clear lines, and it does not appear to us that there has been any complete ouster.

Upon the testimony in the case, the facts do not seem to us to be left in any doubt. There can be no question but that all parties assumed and acted on the assumption, that the fence was the boundary, and that no one ever questioned it until defendant made his purchase. The railroad company from whom he bought, did not suppose there was any controversy about lines, and had no actual knowledge on the subject at all. The line had been acquiesced in as properly located, for fifteen years before defendant purchased. And although defendant undertakes to make out that, before he purchased, complainant was fully informed of the true boundaries, and admitted the error, his cross-examination, in connection with other...