Butrick v. Tilton

29 N.E. 1088, 155 Mass. 461, 1892 Mass. LEXIS 348
CourtMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
DecidedJanuary 19, 1892
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 29 N.E. 1088 (Butrick v. Tilton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Butrick v. Tilton, 29 N.E. 1088, 155 Mass. 461, 1892 Mass. LEXIS 348 (Mass. 1892).

Opinion

Barker, J.

1. The demandants claim title by descent from Nathan Ayer, who died intestate in the year 1813, leaving five children, three of whom were ancestors of the original demand-ants. After action brought, two demandants died, and the widow of each came in to prosecute for her husband’s share. Subsequently, one of these widows died, and her heir came in to prosecute. At the trial, the tenant ashed a ruling that the heir of the widow of the deceased demandant could not recover. It did not appear that the original demandant died testate, or [463]*463that he left any other real estate than that demanded, or that his share therein was more than $5,000 in value. So far as appeared, his widow took his interest in fee upon his death, under the provisions of the Pub. Sts. c. 124, § 3, (Proctor v. Clark, 154 Mass. 45,) and was entitled under the provisions of the Pub. Sts. c. 173, § 11, and of c. 165, § 15, to come in and prosecute jointly with the surviving demandants in the same manner as if she had originally joined with them in the suit. The effect of these provisions was to place her in the same position as if her title had accrued at or before the commencement of the suit and she had been an original demandant; so that the provisions of the Pub. Sts. c. 173, § 4, with reference to presumed entry and ouster, apply, and she could recover if the original demandant, to whose right she had succeeded, had a right of entry on the day when the action was commenced. In contemplation of the statutes, she was herself a demandant, and when she died her heir in turn was properly admitted to prosecute in the same way and with the same effect. The objection that in such cases the title of the persons so admitted accrues after that of the other demandants, and that her right to rents and profits, which must be recovered in the same action, if at all, would not be the same with that of the other demandants, lies equally to the admission of the heir of an original demandant. A sufficient answer is that the recovery of rents and profits is only an incident to the recovery of judgment. Backus v. Chapman, 111 Mass. 386. The court rightly refused the ruling that the heir of the widow of the deceased original demandant could nof recover.

2. The tenant requested two rulings based upon the assumption that one of the boundaries was in dispute. But the court found that the line was not in dispute, and the exceptions disclose no evidence of any such dispute, and no evidence upon the subject. Under these circumstances, the court was not prevented by any rule of law from finding that, in fact, there was no such dispute, and we cannot revise rulings based upon an assumption which the court found to be erroneous.

3. The court refused rulings based upon the theory that it must find for the tenant, unless it could find what undivided portion each demandant was entitled to recover; and that the finding and judgment must show to what undivided portion of the prem[464]*464ises each demandant was entitled. The details of the evidence are not stated" with sufficient fulness to enable us to know what proportion of the estate each demandant claimed, or whether, upon the evidence, there were questions of law which might make it uncertain, as between themselves, what proportion each Was entitled to, while it might be clear upon the same evidence that each had an undivided interest, and that all of them together had the interest found by the court, and were so entitled to recover that undivided interest. The finding was that they recover eighty-two two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth parts. Under the Pub. Sts. c. 173, § 7, two or more persons claiming as tenants in common may join in a suit for the recovery of lands, and under § 10 may recover any undivided portion to which they prove title. We see no reason why the tenant should have the right to require the judgment to specify the proportions of the several demandants; no injury to him is shown by the omission so to do, nor is it the usual practice. So far as we are aware, the judgment in such cases is for the undivided portion to which the demand-ants collectively are entitled. Kelley v. Meins, 135 Mass. 231. These requests were properly refused.

4. In order to establish their title, it was necessary for the demandants to prove, among other things, that the locus passed by inheritance from Jacob Ayer, who died in 1789, to his' heirs. Two instruments under seal were in evidence, executed by him on May 29, 1769, in one of which he quitclaimed to certain persons and their heirs and assigns forever, “ one half of the privilege of the fishing place at the Lower Sands, so called, in Haverhill," and in the other “ one half of the fishing priviledge at ye Lower Sands, so called, in Haverhill," and it was shown that the Lower Sands included the river shore of the demanded premises. The tenant asked the court to rule that each of these instruments conveyed a fee in the premises. This request was rightly refused. The instruments are in the form of articles of agreement. The grantees in each are given the privilege of fishing at the place, but only in a certain specified manner. They respectively can use but one seine, and the grantor stipulates that but two shall be used at the whole place, and that he will allow a convenient way to pass and repass, and binds himself and his heirs in a penal sum to abide by the agreement. In the second [465]*465agreement, he also binds himself to find and provide for the grantees a good and sufficient seine, of a specified size, with a good fishing boat and oars, and have them always ready in the fishing season yearly; and he is to receive one half of the catch. The agreements were not conveyances of the fishing place, but of easements or rights of fishery. A river fishery, however plentiful the salmon and shad might then have been, was carried on during only a very limited portion of the year, and could require no such continuous, exclusive, or permanent occupation or use of the land as to imply an intent to grant the whole interest in the soil. Johnson v. Rayner, 6 Gray, 107, 110. Jamaica Pond Aqueduct v. Chandler, 9 Allen, 159, 164.

5. Whatever title Nathan Ayer had, he acquired by three deeds to himself, made in 1810 and 1811 by a sister, some nephews, and a niece of Jacob Ayer, of all the right that they respectively had in any estate, real or personal, belonging to the estate of Jacob Ayer. These deeds were admitted in evidence, against the tenant’s objection that they were not admissible under the pleading to prove tenancies in common. In support of his exception, the tenant argues that the demandants allege seisin as joint tenants. As the allegation of seisin is in the usual form, namely, that the demandants “ were seised of the messuage as aforesaid, with the appurtenances, in their demesne, as of fee within twenty years last past,” and does not specify a joint tenancy, there is no ground for this exception.

6. In order to show that the deeds mentioned conveyed interests in the premises, it was necessary for the demandants to prove that Jacob Ayer left no issue. Mrs. Butriek, a demand-ant, was called upon this point. It appeared that she was born in the year 1833, Jacob Ayer having died in 1789, and that she was the granddaughter of his step-daughter, her grandmother having been the daughter by a former husband of Jacob Ayer’s second wife, and having resided in his family up to his death.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
29 N.E. 1088, 155 Mass. 461, 1892 Mass. LEXIS 348, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/butrick-v-tilton-mass-1892.