Valdez v. Walck
| Decision Date | 27 February 2014 |
| Docket Number | NO. 30,156,30,156 |
| Parties | JOSE A. E. VALDEZ and VIDILIA VALDEZ, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. ALFRED R. WALCK, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of New Mexico |
This memorandum opinion was not selected for publication in the New Mexico Appellate Reports. Please see Rule 12-405 NMRA for restrictions on the citation of unpublished memorandum opinions. Please also note that this electronic memorandum opinion may contain computer-generated errors or other deviations from the official paper version filed by the Court of Appeals and does not include the filing date.
APPEAL FROM THE DISTRICT COURT OF MORA COUNTY
Las Vegas, NM
L. Helen Bennett
Albuquerque, NM
for Appellees
The Turner Law Firm, LLC
Scott E. Turner
Albuquerque, NM
Law Offices of Brian A. Thomas, P.C.
Brian A. Thomas
Albuquerque, NM
for Appellant
{1} Alfred Walck (Walck)1 appeals the district court order quieting title to a disputed portion of property located in Mora County, New Mexico in favor of Jose A. E. Valdez (Valdez). The district court bifurcated the legal and equitable claims asserted in the case and held a bench trial to resolve the equitable issues to quiet title. Following that proceeding, the district court concluded that Walck was without right or title to the disputed land, and Valdez was the owner in fee simple absolute. On appeal, Walck argues that the district court erred in bifurcating the proceedings, in dismissing Walck's counterclaims, in awarding the disputed property to Valdez on the basis of his record title, and in denying Walck's claim to title by adverse possession. We affirm.
{2} This case arose from a dispute over the ownership over a plot of land located in Mora County, New Mexico. The contested portion of land consists of fifty-one acres located between Valdez and Walck's undisputed portions of property. By deed, Valdez owns ninety-five acres of land, sixty of which he acquired from his mother, and thirty-five of which he purchased from his sister. In each deed, the acreagedesignation is followed by the phrase "more or less" or the Spanish translation of the phrase, "mas o menos." Walck acquired his land by maternal inheritance; however, the amount of acreage Walck actually possesses is not evident from the chain of title.
{3} The conflict over the disputed fifty-one acres has persisted since at least 1993 when Walck sought to quiet title against Valdez. That case was dismissed as a consequence of Walck's failure to prosecute. In November 2004, Valdez and his wife filed a complaint to quiet title to 146.698 acres of land against Walck and his siblings.2 The acreage identified in the Valdez complaint constituted his ninety-five acres and the disputed fifty-one acres. Walck answered the complaint and filed several counterclaims against Valdez, seeking himself to quiet title to the fifty-one acres of land and seeking tort damages for trespass by cattle, assault, harassment, and intentional infliction of emotional duress.
{4} In March 2005 the district court entered a Rule 1-016 NMRA (1990) scheduling order. Over Walck's jury demand and objection to bifurcation, a bench trial on the merits of the quiet title claims was held on February 21, February 22, and April 13 of 2006. At the trial, each party elicited testimony from professional land surveyors regarding their respective claims of title by deed and stipulated to the competency andexpertise of each surveyor.3 In addition to the professional land surveyor, Walck relied on an expert in title examination.
{5} Valdez's land surveyor, P. David Archuleta, testified regarding his 1992 survey of Valdez's property, in which he determined that Valdez's total acreage amounted to approximately 146.69 acres. Archuleta had previously performed surveys in the Mora County area and testified that deeds from this region can be challenging documents to rely upon because they often do not contain mete and bounds descriptions, a circumstance he discovered to exist when he attempted to discern the parameters of Valdez's deed. Archuleta also testified that acreage valuations in the Mora County area usually exhibit variations from those listed on the deed. Although Archuleta acknowledged that his survey incorporated in excess of the ninety-six deeded acres Valdez definitively possessed, he explained that it is not unusual for surveyors working in the Mora County area to encounter situations where the acreageresulting from a survey amounts to larger or smaller quantities than those indicated on the deeds.
{6} To describe the method he employed to survey Valdez's land, Archuleta testified that he relied on stones located around Valdez's property that both Valdez and the northern neighboring land owner indicated to be boundary markers. Archuleta stated that he had previously used similar stones in conducting his survey work. He further testified that the stones that Valdez signaled to mark the boundary lines of the property were set into the ground, appeared to be undisturbed, and were composed of a material different from those stones usually found in the area. Archuleta noted that the stone markers matched those placed upon an undisputed boundary line located on the northern border of the property.
{7} Archuleta's testimony regarding the use of stones to demarcate property boundaries was buttressed by the testimony of both Valdez's brother and Valdez's adjoining northern neighbor. Valdez's brother testified that when he was young, his father instructed him that the stones marked the boundary line of the property. He recalled that the stones had been positioned on the property before he was born and still occupied the same location. Further, Valdez's northern neighbor testified that property boundaries in the area are marked using rocks similarly relied upon by her own property surveyor. Lastly, this neighbor indicated that the fence constructedbetween her property and Valdez's property followed the placement of the stones and thus marked the agreed boundary line between the two plots of land.
{8} After trial, the district court entered a partial final judgment and decree quieting title to the disputed property in favor of Valdez. The district court ruled that Valdez was "the owner, free and clear of all liens and encumbrances, in fee simple absolute" of the 146.698 acres located in Mora County, including the fifty-one disputed acres. Concluding that Valdez's ownership interest and title were superior, the district court further found that Walck had "no estate, right, title interest, or lien in, to or upon the . . . land and real estate[.]" The district court did not rule upon either party's claim to the disputed property under a theory of adverse possession.
{9} Following entry of judgment on September 11, 2007, Walck filed a motion to reconsider, and in a memorandum of law again reiterated his asserted ownership of the disputed acreage based on his strength of title and adverse possession. Walck repeated his objection to the district court's decision to bifurcate the legal and equitable claims. The district court denied Walck's motion, and on February 14, 2008, Walck appealed the district court's decision to this Court. We, however, dismissed Walck's appeal on the basis that his counterclaims remained pending before the district court and consequently the order from which Walck sought to appeal was not a final and appealable order.
{10} In June 2009, approximately three years after the conclusion of the bench trial on the equitable claims, Valdez filed a motion to dismiss Walck's counterclaims under Rule 1-041(E)(1) NMRA, on the basis that Walck had failed, as had been the case in his prior 1993 effort to acquire the disputed acreage, to take any significant action to bring his counterclaims to trial or to otherwise seek a final disposition. In response, Walck asserted that the bifurcated claims would be substantially affected by the scope of the land damaged by Valdez's cattle, and in the event the quiet title judgment in favor of Valdez was not upheld, Walck would be entitled to greater damages. However, the record indicates that by then his initial appeal had been dismissed for over a year, yet still Walck had taken no action to pursue or otherwise advance the pending counterclaims that constituted the basis for our dismissal of his appeal. Concluding the case, the district court granted Valdez's motion and dismissed Walck's counterclaims with prejudice in accordance with Rule 1-041(E)(1). The present appeal ensued.
{11} On appeal, Walck contends that the district court erred in four distinct rulings: (1) bifurcating the legal and equitable claims, (2) dismissing his counterclaims pursuant to Rule 1-041(E)(1), (3) awarding the disputed property to Valdez on thebasis of his record title, and (4) denying his claim to title by adverse possession. We disagree and affirm each ruling of the district court on the bases articulated below.
{12} Walck maintains that the district court violated his constitutional right to a trial by jury when it bifurcated the legal and equitable issues and held a bench trial on the equitable claim to quiet title, thereby resolving factual issues common to both claims and prior to adjudication of all legal issues. We review a district court's decision to bifurcate for abuse of discretion. See Blea v. Fields, 2005-NMSC-029, ¶ 18, 138 N.M. 348, 120 P.3d 430; Bolton v. Bd. ofCnty Comm'rs, 1994-NMCA-167, ¶ 23, 119 N.M. 355, 890 P.2d 808. A district court abuses its discretion in deciding equitable claims prior to tendering the legal claims to a jury if there are issues of fact material to both the legal and equitable claims. Blea, 2005-NMSC-029, ¶ 18. If no issues of material fact are common to both the legal and equitable claims, a...
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