Home/West Virginia Supreme Court/Clear Fork Coal Co. v. Anchor Coal Co.

Clear Fork Coal Co. v. Anchor Coal Co.

161 S.E. 229, 111 W. Va. 219, 1931 W. Va. LEXIS 192
CourtWest Virginia Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 27, 1931
Docket6926
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 161 S.E. 229 (Clear Fork Coal Co. v. Anchor Coal Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering West Virginia Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Clear Fork Coal Co. v. Anchor Coal Co., 161 S.E. 229, 111 W. Va. 219, 1931 W. Va. LEXIS 192 (W. Va. 1931).

Opinion

Lively, Judge:

Anchor Coal Company prosecutes error to a judgment of the circuit court of Raleigh County, entered March 17, 1930, on a verdict in favor of plaintiffs in an action of ejectment in which about thirty acres of coal land was in dispute. The parties have coal lease deeds from a common grantor, the Coal River Mining & Lumber Company, which, in the year 1909, owned in fee a tract of 5356 acres of coal lying in Raleigh and Boone Counties on the waters of Big Coal River. In that year, the grantor laid off its tract into five mining leases, and had map prepared showing division of the tract into proposed leases. Lease No. 1 was deeded to defendant by metes and bounds in December, 1909,- lease No. 4 was, on March 1, 1910, deeded to plaintiff, Clear Fork Coal Company, by metes and bounds, which subleased the portion in controversy to plaintiff, Leevale Coal Company, on June 28, 1919. Leases 2 and 3 were deeded to Seng Creek Coal Company in 1911, and on February 22, 1913, a portion of lease No. 2, containing 404 acres, was deeded to Anchor Coal Company. The location of a dividing line between lease No. 4 and No. 2 where that- portion of lease No. 2 is now owned by defendant, Anchor Coal Company, is the basis of the controversy.

*221 It appears that when Coal Elver Mining & Lumber Company divided its large tract into leases, it sent surveyor Yen-able on the ground with .instructions to make the leases between the water courses as far as practicable, and lease No. 4 was laid off between the waters of Big Coal Eiver and Clear Fork of Coal River on the west, Rockhouse Creek of Clear Fork on the south to mouth of Lick Fork (7250 feet from its mouth) and Tom’s Branch on the north from a “small fork” thereof to its confluence with Big Coal. A map of the land embraced in lease No. 4 was made a part of the deed therefor and recorded therewith, and a photostatic copy here inserted will aid in visualizing the controversy. (See page 222.)

Surveyor Yenable followed the water courses from D (mouth of Tom’s Branch) to Lick Fork of Rockhouse Creek, 7250 feet from its mouth, giving distances but not courses until he reached that point (which is described as a corner to lease No. 1) from which corner he laid down the lines on the map: “Thence N. 23° W. 3900 feet to corner of No. 2 lease; thence with line of No. 2 lease S. 45° W. 2350 feet to small fork of Tom’s Branch”, from which point he followed Tom’s Branch (a line of No. 2 lease) 4500 feet, thence with Tom’s Branch, a line of lease 3 to the beginning at D on the map, at the mouth of Tom’s Branch, the lease containing 1350 acres. The length of the 3900 feet line from the mouth of Lick Fork of Rockhouse to N. 23° W. to a corner of No. 2 lease is controverted by defendant. It says that line is in fact shorter by 720 feet. In other words, that the corner of lease No. 1 and No. 2 on that line is in fact 720 feet closer to the junction of Lick Fork with Rockhouse Creek. The court instructed the jury that if they believed that the mouth of Lick Fork of Rockhouse Creek is a corner to lease 4 and is a point fixed in the deed to plaintiff and that the line running thence to the disputed territory is in no title papers pertinent to the lands in controversy, described by any natural object or objects; and that no natural object was fixed by the lessor or its grantees as the northern terminus of said line, then the jury, in fixing the extent and location of lease 4 as originally made by the lessor, should find that such line runs from the

*222

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
161 S.E. 229, 111 W. Va. 219, 1931 W. Va. LEXIS 192, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/clear-fork-coal-co-v-anchor-coal-co-wva-1931.