Wallin v. Rice
| Decision Date | 20 September 1950 |
| Docket Number | No. 89,89 |
| Citation | 61 S.E.2d 82,232 N.C. 371 |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | WALLIN, v. RICE. |
J. M. Baley, Jr. and Carl R. Stuart, Marshall, for plaintiff appellee.
Clyde M. Roberts and John H. McElroy Marshall, for defendant appellant.
Defendant's motion for judgment of nonsuit was properly denied, but we think there was error in the court's instructions to the jury entitling the defendant to a new trial.
The plaintiff's evidence tended to show that in 1911 he entered into possession of a tract of 126 acres of land under a deed which described the land by metes and bounds, and has lived on it ever since, cultivating a portion, devoting a portion to grazing, using wood and timber, and that defendant has entered on a small triangular shaped parcel of this land on the southeast side thereof and cut and removed timber.
Defendant owns a tract of 50 acres of land south of plaintiff's tract but the bounds set out in his deed do not extend beyond or across plaintiff's lines, and defendant admitted he had no deed covering the land in controversy, and that he claimed title to the locus--the triangle--only by adverse possession for twenty years. This triangle projects northward from defendant's land into the area included within the boundaries of plaintiff's deed. Defendant testified in substance that he had exercised acts of ownership on this triangle, making the ordinary use and taking the ordinary profits of which the land was susceptible, cutting timber, and planting patches of beans in the open woodland, and that those acts of possession were done openly, continuously and adversely for more than twenty years. There was also evidence tending to show that the western leg of the triangle was denoted by a wire fence separating the disputed land from the remainder of plaintiff's land, and the eastern leg by a well defined mountain ridge. At the apex was a walnut tree and at the southwest corner was a depression where a corner Spanish oak had stood.
Though the defendant's evidence was sharply contradicted, it is apparent that it was sufficient to go to the jury on the issue of adverse possession of the disputed area.
The court charged the jury as follows: ...
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Locklear v. Oxendine
...held only by constructive possession'. This declaration is not entirely in accord with what is held in the recent case of Wallin v. Rice, 232 N.C. 371, 61 S.E.2d 82. The headnote there expresses the holding in this manner: 'While the possession of one entering upon lands under a deed descri......
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Wachovia Bank & Trust Co. v. Miller
...and is no adverse possession of the tract in whole or in part during such seven consecutive years by another. G.S. § 1-38; Wallin v. Rice, 232 N.C. 371, 61 S.E.2d 82; Price v. Whisnant, 232 N.C. 653, 62 S.E.2d 56; Vance v. Guy, 223 N.C. 409, 27 S.E.2d 117; Ray v. Anders, 164 N.C. 311, 80 S.......
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Jernigan v. Herring, COA05-1233.
...title to the land in that manner.'" Dockery v. Hocutt, 357 N.C. 210, 217-18, 581 S.E.2d 431, 436 (2003) (quoting Wallin v. Rice, 232 N.C. 371, 373, 61 S.E.2d 82, 83 (1950)). See also N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-40 (2005) (defining statutory time frame for adverse possession). Further, the "possessi......