Vanderbilt University v. Williams

• Decision Date: 13 March 1926
• Parties: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY et al. v. WILLIAMS et al.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

280 S.W. 689

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY et al. v. WILLIAMS et al.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

March 13, 1926.

Appeal from Chancery Court, Davidson County; R. T. Smith, Special Chancellor.

Suit by the Vanderbilt University and others against W. C. Williams and others. Decree for complainants was affirmed in Court of Appeals, and defendants appeal. Reversed, and bill dismissed.

S. L. Felts and Albert Williams, both of Nashville, for appellants.

Jordan Stokes, Sr., and Louis Leftwich, both of Nashville, for appellees.

CHAMBLISS, J.

This bill was filed to recover one-half of rents collected by defendant Williams from a fruit vendor, who had accupied a space in a passageway or alley, located between buildings owned respectively by the complainants and this defendant. It was originally charged that complainants had a perpetual easement for passageway use in one-half of this alley. At the hearing an amendment was offered to the bill, and allowed to be made by the chancellor, so as to charge ownership of an undivided one-half interest in fee in the passage, or a private easement therein. The defendant opposed the granting of the amendment upon the ground of repugnancy.

The chancellor found that complainant Levine, the beneficial complainant, was entitled to recover one-half of the rents accruing from the lease of the alley and so decreed, adjudg-that the respective owners of the properties adjoining the passageway were owners in fee simple as tenants in common of a one-half undivided interest each therein.

The Court of Appeals found that the amendment was repugnant and should not have been allowed, but, holding this immaterial, affirmed the decree of the chancellor as to results, with a slight modification in amount. The view of the Court of Appeals was that the respective parties owned each in fee a divided one-half of the strip of ground described and that they were tenants in common of an easement therein; that complainant could waive the tort arising out of the trespass and recover one-half of the rents which had been received by defendant Williams, on the theory that their rental value would be the measure of damages for the trespass; that complainant was in reality suing for money had and received.

The lot or parcel of land, located in Nashville at the southeast corner of Third avenue and Public Square, was at one time owned by one Barrow; his ownership extending from the Public Square south along what is now Third Avenue North, so as to include the property of the complainants, the passageway in dispute, and the property now owned by defendant Williams. Barrow first sold, in 1820, by accurately stated measurements, the building and lot now owned by complainant Levine, retaining the adjoining property now owned by defendants; the deed containing a clause granting the passageway easement described, the description in the deed reading as follows:

"Being that part of the corner building of said Barrow, called Barrow's corner, marked No. 2 being part of the lot originally marked in the plan of said town No. ___, and now in the use and occupation of Arch and George McNeill as a store. Beginning on the Public Square and upper part thereof where College street meets said square directly in the angle made by said Public Square and College street, being the corner of said house No. 2, running thence up College street parallel with and on the same forty-three feet ten inches to a small alley or passage, thence at right angles with College street and parallel with said small passage or alley, eighteen feet two inches, thence at right angles with said last-mentioned line and alley in the middle of the wall that divides said house from said Barrow's brick store that adjoins Williams Lytle's store forty-three feet ten inches to the Public Square, meeting the same at right angles, thence with said Public Square to the beginning, together with the free and undisturbed use forever of one-half of said small passage or alley as far as the same binds on the line herein before set out and as high up as the arch in said buildings over said passage or alley, the same being designed as a free and undisturbed passway forever for said Barrow and his assigns forever without right in himself or said assigns in any wise to obstruct or stop up the same."

In this court we understand counsel for defendants to concede that the deed from Barrow, above quoted from, conveying the property to the ancestors of Levine, did not carry anything more than an easement in the adjoining passageway. In this we concur. The general rule undoubtedly is, as found by the Court of Appeals, that conveyances of land bounded by a street, or highway, carry the title to the center of the way, subject to the public use, unless there is something in the description showing an intent to the contrary, or unless the circumstances are such that the rule cannot be applied. Brewster on Conveyancing, p. 107. In the majority of jurisdictions this rule is extended to conveyances of lots abutting on public alleys.¹ However, this author in the same section says:

"The rule by which the mention of a way as a boundary is presumed to mean the center of the way, if it belongs to the grantor, is not an absolute rule of law irrespective of manifest intention, but is merely a principle of interpretation, adopted for the purpose of finding out the true meaning of the words used."

This rule of interpretation appears to rest partly upon the principle that the legal terminus of a boundary by a monument is at the central point of the monument — that when a way is called for as a boundary the center is intended —...