Carter v. . White

7 S.E. 473, 101 N.C. 30

• Court: Supreme Court of North Carolina
• Decided: September 5, 1888
• Status: Published

Opinion

Smith, C. J.,

(after stating the case.) The statute which authorizes the present action provides that any person “aggrieved by any grant or patent issued or made since July 4, 1776, to any other person against law, or obtained by false suggestion, surprise or fraud,” may proceed in the Superior Court to have the same “ repealed and vacated,” and as the complaint must allege, so the evidence must show, that the obnoxious patent issued against law, or was procured under the circumstances and conditions pointed out, or the action must fail. In the construction of the statute it is held that the remedy is open only to a senior against a junior grantee, inasmuch as none can be aggrieved unless he has an interest in the subject matter of the obnoxious grant when it issued, which a junior grantee has not, and that the purpose is to remove a cloud overshadowing a previously acquired title. O’Kelley v. Clayton, 2 D. & B., 246, following the elaborate discussion of the point by Daniel, J., delivering the opinion in Crow v. Holland, 4 Dev., 417. It is not less necessary that the junior grant, sought to be vacated, must have issued “ against law, or been obtained by false suggestion, surprise or fraud,” to invalidate it as a conveyance, and put it out of the way of the aggrieved party. Miller v. Twitty, 3 D. & B., 14.

The facts ascertained by the Court clearly fail to bring the case within the operation of the law, so as to entitle the plaintiffs to the relief they demand, unless, as their counsel maintain, their grant embraces the whole of Walker’s Island, with its water boundaries, and is not circumscribed by the specific lines that follow the calls and general designation of that Island. For it is definitely found that if those lines are pursued the defendants’ land lies wholly outside of them, and as there is no interference, the plaintiffs have no claim to possess an interest in the latter, and cannot, in the sense of the law, be an aggrieved party. ■

So the solution of the controversy depends entirely upon the construction to be put upon the descriptive terms contained in the grant to Dunton. Does the call of the land as “known by the' name of Walker’s Island,” notwithstanding what follows as a specific designation by distinci. and definite boundaries of its extent, control in the construction ?

While the words recited, unconnected with others, will embrace a water bound tract as an island is such, yet. upon every well settled rule of interpretation, subsequent restrictive words, giving and defining its boundaries, must have the effect of qualifying the preceding general designation.

The Island determines, as does the mention of the county, •the locality of the land granted; the particufar description, what portion is intended, and thus the general and true intent is reached, and an apparent repugnancy avoided, and the .deed rendered self-consistent.

It cannot be necessary to cite authority in the support of :so manifest a proposition, and we refrain from prosecuting the discussion. As then, the land described in the defendants’ grant, is not embraced in that of the plaintiffs; the Hatter have no standing in Court to make complaint of the action of the grantee White, under the statute, as they have no claim to the land granted to him, nor was his grant unlawful.

This being the only exception in the record of which we can take notice in the appeal, and it being untenable, it must be declared that there is no error, and we affirm the judgment. Affirmed.