Bristow v. Carriger

1909 OK 151, 103 P. 596, 24 Okla. 324, 1909 Okla. LEXIS 47
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedJuly 13, 1909
Docket195
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 1909 OK 151 (Bristow v. Carriger) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Bristow v. Carriger, 1909 OK 151, 103 P. 596, 24 Okla. 324, 1909 Okla. LEXIS 47 (Okla. 1909).

Opinion

TüRNER, J.

From an order of the district court of ,Coal county dissolving a temporary injunction issued at chambers herein on October‘5, 1905, by the Judge of the United States Court for the Indian Territory, Central District, at Atoka, restraining J. W. Carriger and James Carriger,. defendants in error, .'defendants below, their, agents, servants, etc., from going on the premises set forth in the complaint or removing therefrom any portion of the *326 crop raised by them thereon that year, A. J. Bristow, plaintiff in error, plaintiff below, prosecutes this appeal, and assigns and relies upon 21 alleged errors as grounds for reversal. After demurrers were died to the complaint and answer, and before they were passed upon, the cause was by consent referred to a special master to take proof and report upon the issues of fact and of law, which he did December 9, 1905, and which said report was by the court approved and the order appealed from entered. As the respective demurrers search the record, and plaintiff would profit nothing thereby, we will pass the contention that the court erred in overruling plaintiff’s demurrer to defendants’ answer and proceed to determine the cause upon its merits, which are best reached by considering his assignment that the order of the court dissolving the temporary injunction is contrary to law. As the dissolving of an injunction, like the granting of it, is a matter largely within a sound judicial discretion to be determined by the facts.in each particular ease and as, except in case of. manifest abuse or a clear showing of error on the part of the trial court, this court will not interfere with that discretion. (Am. & Eng. Ene. of.Law, 424.) The question for us to determine is whether, under all the facts, the trial court, in dissolving the injunction and entering the order complained of, exercised a sound judicial discretion. If so, we must sustain the order.

The evidence tends to prove, as found by the master: That the lands set forth in the complaint are a part of the allotment of Newton T. Tiner, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation; that on February 11, 1904, Tiner for value leased said land to defendants for a term of three years from January 1, 1904; that said lease was recorded July 2 1904; that they took possession under said lease and raised and harvested a crop on said land that year; that, while thus in possession of said lands, said Tiner made a lease thereof to plaintiff dated August .6, 1904, who recorded it August 11, 1904; that on December 29, 1904, plaintiff served on defendants a' written notice to quit and deliver possession of said land to him, and on their failure to do so, on April 1, 1905, brought *327 suit in ejectment against them ior possession thereof in the United States Court at Atoka; that some time in August, 1905, plaintiff joined said Tiner in complaint to the United States Indian agent for the Union agency that defendants were unlawfully withholding said land from him; that thereupon said agent investigated the case and informed defendants at their home a short time thereafter that their lease was invalid whereupon Tiner, who was present at the interview, told defendants that they could have the crops then growing on said place; that thereafter on September 16, 1905, said Indian agent dispossessed defendants of said land and placed Tiner in possession thereof, he making no claim to the crop belonging to defendants, who, prior to that time, had gathered a part of it, and on October 5, 1905, while continuing so to do, plaintiff, being in possession of said land under Tiner, dismissed his said suit in ejectment and by the order dissolved, restrained defendants from coming on said land and harvesting the remainder of said crop, alleging himself to be the owner thereof.

Plaintiff’s theory of this case, in effect, is that as the crop was a part of the freehold at the time he jfcook possession thereof, and the same being within his close, he has a right to invoke the injunctive aid of the court to protect his property rights therein against repeated trespasses, to compensate him in damages for which he has no adequate remedy at law, owing to the insolvency of defendants. There might be some ground for equitable interference were he the owner or possessed of an interest in the property; but he is not. It is insisted that the lease under which defendants entered is void in virtue of that section of the Atoka agreement set forth in Act June 28, 1898, c 517, § 29, 30 Stat. 507, which reads:

“Every lease which is not evidenced by writing, setting out specifically the terms thereof, or which is not recorded in the clerk’s office of the United States Court for the district in which the land is located, within three months after the date of its execution, shall be void, and the purchaser or lessee shall acquire no rights whatever by an entry or holding thereunder.”

Conceding this to be true, defendants in possession under the *328 same were tenants at will, not only by virtue of M’.ansf. Dig. § 3380 (Ind. T. Ann. St. 1899, § 2314), which reads:

"All leases, estates, interests of freeholds, or lease of years, or any uncertain interest of, in, to or out of any messuages, lands or tenements, made or created by livery or seizing only, or by parol, and not put in writing and signed by the parties so making or creating the same, or their agents lawfully authorized by writing, shall have the force and effect of leases or estates at will only, and shall not, either in law or equity, be deemed or taken to have any other or greater effect of force than as leases not exceeding the term of one year” — -

but also by authority of a long line of adjudicated cases, among which is Brockway v. Thomas, 36 Ark. 518, and Rogers v. Hill, 3 Ind. T. 562, 64 S. W. 536. In the latter the court said:

“It has been uniformly held that possession under an invalid conveyance or contract of sale creates a tenancy at will, and, where a tenant goes into possession under an invalid lease, his tenancy at its inception is merely a tenancy at will. Hall v. Wallace, 88 Cal. 434, 26 Pac. 360; Packard v. Railroad Co., 46 Ill. App. 244; Lehman v. Nolting, 56 Mo. App. 549; Howard v. Merriman, 5 Cush. (Mass.) 563; McIntosh v. Lee, 57 Iowa, 356, 10 N W. 896.”

See, also, 18 Am. & Eng. Enc. of Law. p.. 184, note 7, and cases cited.-

■ How' this tenancy at will thus established was terminated, if at all, plaintiff does not suggest. It is clear, however, that, as such tenancy is terminable by any act of ownership on the part of the landlord inconsistent with the nature of the estate (18 Am. & Eng. Enc- of Law, 181?), if the making of the lease to plaintiff had no such effect, the same was brought about by the expiration of defendant’s term of one year under their- lease after which their holding over up to the time they were dispossessed by the Indian agent amounted to a mere tenancy at sufferance. Hau xhurst v. Lobree, 38. Cal. 563.

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Bluebook (online)
1909 OK 151, 103 P. 596, 24 Okla. 324, 1909 Okla. LEXIS 47, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/bristow-v-carriger-okla-1909.