Home/Louisiana Court of Appeal/Baudin v. Charrier

Baudin v. Charrier

137 So. 2d 440, 1962 La. App. LEXIS 1560
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedFebruary 7, 1962
DocketNo. 472
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 137 So. 2d 440 (Baudin v. Charrier) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Baudin v. Charrier, 137 So. 2d 440, 1962 La. App. LEXIS 1560 (La. Ct. App. 1962).

Opinion

TATE, Judge.

This is a boundary action. The parties own adjoining tracts. At issue is the easterly boundary line of the plaintiff Baudin’s property, which is also the westerly boundary of the defendant Charrier’s property.

[441]*441The defendant appeals from the trial ■court’s fixing of the boundary between the two estates. His principal contention is that the boundary as fixed by the trial court •deprives him of about five acres to which he had acquired prescriptive title by more than thirty years continuous adverse possession as owner.

Both parties trace their title to a common ancestor, John Charrier, Sr. He had acquired the parent tract of land in 1918, which was described as containing 143 acres. John Charrier, Sr. divided this land into five portions and on December 31, 1921 by five separate sales conveyed them to each of his five children.

The disputed boundary which is the subject of the present litigation is that between the easternmost two tracts. The most ■easterly lot was acquired by Edward Char-rier, the present defendant, which was ■described as containing 33 acres, more or less, “ * * * bounded on the West by land this day sold to Byron Charrier '* * The adjacent lot was acquired hy Byron Charrier, being described as 27 .acres, more or less, “ *■ * * bounded on "the East by land this day sold to Edward ■Charrier * * in 1946, this latter tract was sold by Byron Charrier to Albert Baudin, the present plaintiff.

The evidence shows that the five children ■of John Charrier, Sr. went into possession of their five tracts without the benefit of •a formal recorded survey. There is some ■evidence that the lines between the five tracts were fixed with the aid of a now deceased surveyor, but no record of any such survey could be located. The evidence does ■show, however, the possession lines between the five tracts have approximately the same •general bearing from the Bayou des Glaises ■on the south, running northerly to the rear of the property.

After trial, the District Court fixed the boundary in accordance with the survey of the court-appointed surveyor. On measuring the parent tract, this surveyor discovered that it contained only 134.8 acres instead of the described 143 — -that is, 94% of the described acreage. He, therefore proportionately reduced the acreage of each of the five tracts originally conveyed to the children to 94% of their described acreages and then readjusted the boundaries to reflect this adjusted acreage, even though the boundaries as thus fixed did not at all coincide with the possession lines.

The surveyor thus intended to fix the boundaries between the five tracts in accordance with the rule provided by LSA-Civil Code Article 851:

“If the titles exhibited call for a greater or less extent of land than the land which is to be bounded, contains, the limits must be so fixed as to divide proportionally among the parties interested the profit or loss resulting from this state of things.
"It is understood that the rules prescribed in this and the preceding articles, only take effect in the absence of possession by one or more of the parties, sufficient to establish prescription.” (Italics ours.)

Upon appeal, the defendant-appellant does not question the trial court’s determination of the ideal limits of the two tracts as fixed by the acreages to which entitled by record title. The defendant Char-rier does contend, however, that since 1922 he has continuously possessed as owner and cultivated about five acres of the land within the ideal limits of the plaintiff’s tract. Since the present suit was filed in 1958, or more than thirty years after Charrier’s possession commenced, he claims prescriptive title to this five-acre strip, relying upon the thirty-year acquisitive prescriptions provided by LSA-Civil Code Articles 852 and 3499, which had been pleaded by him in the trial court.

To clarify this contention and the following discussion, we incorporate the sketch denoted as “Exhibit A”, which was copied from the plat of the court-appointed surveyor dated March 10, 1960 and filed as Court Exhibit I in the present proceedings.

[442]

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Bluebook (online)
137 So. 2d 440, 1962 La. App. LEXIS 1560, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/baudin-v-charrier-lactapp-1962.