Wills v. Blackwell, 79-362
| Decision Date | 25 July 1980 |
| Docket Number | No. 79-362,79-362 |
| Citation | 386 So.2d 427 |
| Parties | Fred D. WILLS and Diane C. Wills v. Harrelson L. BLACKWELL, David Ross Blackwell and Wanda Carol Blackwell. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
D. C. Martinson, of Martinson & Beason, Huntsville, for appellants.
Joe B. Smith, Huntsville, for appellees.
This appeal is from a final judgment establishing the true and correct boundary line between plaintiffs' and defendants' land. We affirm.
This dispute arose when plaintiffs Fred and Diane Wills discovered that a survey, performed in August of 1976 by Gilbert Engineering Company, revealed that a fence constructed between the contiguous tracts of real estate owned by plaintiffs and defendants was not on the boundary line indicated by their respective deeds of conveyance. Plaintiffs filed suit against defendants Harrelson Blackwell, David Blackwell, and Wanda Blackwell, seeking to establish the common boundary line as described in the deeds and Gilbert survey. The trial court, however, found the true and correct common boundary line to be the line described in an earlier survey taken in 1961 by G. W. Jones & Sons.
The single dispositive issue presented on this appeal is whether the findings made by the trial court were clearly erroneous or manifestly unjust. A court may not, of course, arbitrarily choose a boundary line between two parcels of property. Vasko v. Jardine, Ala., 374 So.2d 868, 870 (1979). In the case at bar, however, we do not find that the court fixed the boundary line based on speculations, as plaintiffs claim. Although the trial judge did not set forth his reasons for choosing the Jones survey as the basis for the boundary line, his findings are well supported by the record on this appeal.
George Gillespie was the original common owner of all the real estate owned by plaintiffs and defendants. He sold the property defendants now claim to defendant Harrelson Blackwell in 1961. As a condition to purchasing the property, Blackwell required that a survey first be performed. Gillespie employed the Jones firm to make the survey upon which the trial court predicated the boundaries. After the sale, by using the survey and pins established by Jones, Gillespie worked with Blackwell in erecting the fence that plaintiffs allege encroach upon their land. Seventeen years later, plaintiffs took title to their property from a successor of Gillespie.
The trial judge necessarily must have considered the fact that Blackwell and Gillespie were coterminous...
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...141 Ala. 451, 37 So. 799 (1904). A court may not arbitrarily choose a boundary line between two parcels of property, Wills v. Blackwell, 386 So.2d 427 (Ala.1980), and such possession cannot be left to speculation and conjecture, Miller v. Jones, 280 Ala. 612, 196 So.2d 866 The claimant here......
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...upon adverse possession. However, “[a] court may not arbitrarily choose a boundary line between two parcels of property, Wills v. Blackwell, 386 So.2d 427 (Ala.1980), and such possession cannot be left to speculation and conjecture, Miller v. Jones, 280 Ala. 612, 196 So.2d 866 (1967).” Stor......
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