Weiler & Haas v. Monroe County

• Decision Date: 03 May 1897
• Citation: 74 Miss. 682,21 So. 969
• Parties: WEILER & HAAS v. MONROE COUNTY
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

21 So. 969

74 Miss. 682

WEILER & HAAS v. MONROE COUNTY

Supreme Court of Mississippi

May 3, 1897

March 1897

FROM the chancery court of Monroe county HON. BAXTER MCFARLAND Chancellor.

This suit was instituted by Monroe county, under code 1892, ch 123, seeking the adjudication of the title to a sixteenth section. The amended bill averted that the land was leased December 26, 1833, by the old school trustees for ninety-nine years, and that defendants held under the lease. The lease was denied by defendants, and they claimed the lands in fee and set up the twenty-five years statute, code 1892, § 4148, and the ten years statute of limitations. The court below decreed for complainant, fixing the expiration of the lease on December 26, 1932. Defendants appealed.

Reversed and remanded. Suggestion overruled.

E. H. Bristow, for appellants.

We insist the chancellor erred in failing to exclude the two or three loose papers of memoranda found in the fly leaves of the old "probate court docket, " and offered in evidence to prove the ninety-nine-year lease of the land in controversy, charged in the amended bill to have been made December 26, 1833. It was wholly unauthenticated, except as to some uncertain and rather indefinite proof of the handwriting being that of one of the township trustees in 1833, written on four of the fly leaves of the old docket, between the index and the contents of the docket. There is not in the whole record any proof as to where this book was found, except that it certainly was not found among the old papers of the township trustees or their president or treasurer. If these memoranda are of any force, they must be so as records, and we submit that as records they are wholly unauthenticated. 1 Greenl. on Ev., 501; Phillips v. Cooper, 50 Miss. 722. Certainly they should be established by at least such evidence as is required to authenticate books of account (Moody v. Roberts, 41 Miss. 75); or to establish ancient documents (Fairly v. Fairly, 38 Miss. 280; Nixon v. Porter, 34 Miss. 687); or to authenticate United States department orders ( Davis v. Freeland, 32 Miss. 645). But we submit these memoranda were no record at all, and, therefore, not competent as evidence. They were merely private entries made by private parties, and cannot be held to prejudice third persons, under the plainest rules of law. In the first place, on December 26, 1833, there was no law authorizing or requiring any such record to be kept. The act of January 9, 1824 (Hutch. code, 210, 211), only required the treasurer of the township board to "cause to be entered in a book, to be kept for that purpose, all orders of the trustees for the payment of money, and in what manner appropriated, " etc.

The act of February 20, 1836 (Hutch. code, 217, 218), cannot apply to the entries in the old docket. These entries purport to have been made three years prior to the act of February, 1836. 1 Greenl. on Ev., 558; Storm v. Green, 51 Miss. 103; Jelks v. Barrett, 52 Miss. 315.

Complainant's counsel cite the act of February 28, 1838 (Laws 1838, p. 117). But it is conclusive that no lease was made on December 26, 1833, to any of the parties named. The legislature, by special enactment, provides that trustees, thereafter to be elected, should make the "proper leasehold titles" to said section to the original lessees, or those claiming under them, "whenever said parties should make full and complete payment therefor, " etc. The only legal question necessary to be considered is, whether at any time, prior to the twenty-five years' adverse possession, a legal sale could have been made of the land in fee by the township trustees; and this is answered at once by reference to the act of February 9, 1839 (Hutch. code, 219), providing for either sale or lease of said land, as might be determined by the trustees on the request of two-thirds of the heads of families in the township. After the passage of the act of February 9, 1839, it is well known that most of the sixteenth sections, if not all of them, remaining undisposed of, were sold as unsuitable for school purposes. There is no legal, no sufficient, evidence in the record of any lease. The doctrine of nullum tempus does not preclude this claim of the defendants. From the time of the code of 1857, § 402, which went into effect in November, 1857, down to, at least, the code of 1880, where the chapter of limitations was revised and consolidated, is twenty-three years in which the statutes ran against a county; and of this twenty-three years the defendants themselves held the land from 1863 and 1868 to 1880--that is, from twelve to seventeen years, even leaving out the many previous years of adverse holding by their grantor, Burns, and even his grantors. Jones v. Madison County, 72 Miss. 808. The act of 1877 (Laws 1877, p. 82), by its terms does not apply to counties.

Gilleylan & Leftwich, for the appellee.

The record, as shown by the old book labeled "Probate Docket, " is admissible as testimony. See acts of 1833, compiled acts 1824--38, p. 452. The burden was on defendants to disprove the validity of this old book and show no lease of land was ever made, and, failing therein, makes it presumptive evidence that the land was leased for ninety-nine years. This book can't be spurious. It is too minute; it speaks for itself. This record and its recitals bind the parties and their privies. It records the official acts of the trustees. All presumptions are entertained in behalf of trustees acting officially. Davany v. Koon, 45 Miss. 77; 47 Miss. 181; 48 Miss. 574. But if it should be held that this old book was not a public document, and competent as such, then we submit that, having proved that the same was found in the proper place of deposit, it is competent as an ancient document and admissible under the exception to the rule of hearsay evidence (Greenl. on Ev., secs. 141, 142, 143; also secs. 180, 189, 190, and notes); or, as stated by Mr. Greenleaf, may be introduced as part of the res gestoe, and, therefore, admissible as original evidence (Idem., sec. 144).

The act of 1839 only confers the power to sell when the location of the land is unhealthy or otherwise unsuitable for schools and then a majority of two-thirds of the heads of families of the...