Coleman v. Pollock

186 So. 346, 191 La. 813, 1939 La. LEXIS 1033
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedJanuary 10, 1939
DocketNo. 35038.
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 186 So. 346 (Coleman v. Pollock) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Coleman v. Pollock, 186 So. 346, 191 La. 813, 1939 La. LEXIS 1033 (La. 1939).

Opinion

ROGERS, Justice.

This is an appeal from a judgment rejecting the demands of the plaintiff and interveners to be recognized as owners and to be sent into possession, as such, of an undivided one half interest in a tract of land situated in the Parish of Lincoln.

The facts, as developed in the record, show that Ben F. Franklin and Etta Banks were married on January 5, 1889, and that the plaintiff and interveners were born of this marriage. On January 2, 1895, Ben F. Franklin acquired, by patent from the United States Government, the W% of SW^4 of Section 5, and the NEj4 of SE% of Section 6, Township 20 North, Range 4 West, containing 120 acres, more or less, in Lincoln Parish. On December 6, 1918, Franklin obtained a judgment of divorce against his wife, Etta Banks Franklin, in the Fourth Judicial District Court of Lincoln Parish, and on December 24, 1918, he married Lou Reynolds. On April 9, ■ 1919, Franklin, by an act under private signature duly acknowledged before a notary public, conveyed to D. A. Pollock, for a consideration of $569, the same 120 acres of land which he had acquired from the United States Government. This deed was duly recorded in the conveyance records of Lincoln Parish. On November 22, 1924, D. A. Pollock conveyed to Ben Franklin, for a consideration of $40, the NWi/4 of SWj4 of Section*5, Township 20 North, Range 4 West, containing 40 acres, more or less. This deed was duly recorded in the conveyance records of Lincoln Parish. Etta Banks died in the year 1925, leaving the plaintiff and the three interveners as her only heirs. D. A. Pollock died in the year 1935, leaving his widow, Mrs. Emma Pollock, and seven children, the issue of a previous marriage to Willa Jane Pollock.

On August 31, 1937, plaintiff, as a child and heir of Etta Banks Franklin, brought this suit against the widow and children of D. A. Pollock to be recognized as the owner of her mother’s undivided one half community interest in the 80 acres of land retained by D. A. Pollock out of the original 120 acres of land that he had acquired from Ben F. Franklin. The 80 acres of land involved in this suit is situated in the Lisbon Oil Field in Lincoln Parish and is described as the SWj4 of SWj4 of Section 5, and the NEj4 of SEj4 of Section 6, Township 20 North, Range 4 West

Cora Kimball and Sarah Mack, sisters of the plaintiff, and Birl Franklin, her brother, intervened and joined her in this suit, and in the trial of the case all were treated as plaintiffs and will be hereinafter referred to as such.

*817 Defendants answered plaintiffs’ suit, denying that plaintiffs have any interest in the tract of land in dispute, alleging that D. A. Pollock acquired a full and complete title to the property from Ben F. Franklin by a warranty deed, dated April 9, 1919, as recorded in the conveyance records of Lincoln Parish; that he acquired the property in good faith by a title translative of the whole property, for a good and valuable consideration; that D. A. Pollock, up to the time .of his death, and his widow and heirs, since his death, have been in actual, physical, corporeal, open, notorious, quiet and unequivocal possession of the 80 acre tract in dispute, by farming and cultivating the same through tenants and by exercising thereon other acts of ownership and possession, and that they are, or have been for a period of ten years, in full, complete and undisturbed possession of the property as owners, under a legal title, sufficient and translative of the whole property; and defendants specially pleaded the prescription of ten years acquirendi causa in support of their title.

On the issues as thus made up, the case went to trial. After plaintiffs had completed the offer of their testimony in chief, defendants filed a plea, attacking the validity of the judgment of divorce obtained by Ben F. Franklin against Etta Banks Franklin, and in the alternative, a plea of thirty days’ prescription against the plaintiffs, predicated on the ground that plaintiffs’ mother, Etta Banks Franklin, had failed to accept the community of acquets and gains that had existed between her and Ben Franklin within the period of thirty days allowed for this purpose by Article 2420 of the Civil Code; and that her failure to do so constituted in law a renunciation of the matrimonial community. The codal article was repealed by Act No. 49 of 1926. Plaintiffs filed a plea of estoppel against defendants’ attack on the validity of the judgment of divorce. Both pleas were referred to the merits.

The trial judge sustained the plea of thirty days’ prescription filed by defendants and rejected plaintiffs’ demands. Plaintiffs, as we have hereinabove stated, have appealed from the judgment.

As all the facts are before the Court, which is therefore in a position to render judgment thereon, we have concluded to dispose of this case on defendants’ original plea of prescription of ten years acquirendi causa, which we find to be well founded.

D. A. Pollock acquired the 120 acre tract of land from Ben Franklin by an act translative of property, and it is presumed that he purchased the property in good faith.

“Good faith is always presumed in matters of prescription; and he who alleges bad faith in the possessor, must prove it.” Civ.Code, art. 3481.

The only testimony offered by plaintiffs to impugn the good faith of D. A. Pollock was the testimony of Ben Franklin and of his son-in-law, Boykin Smith. Ben Franklin testified that he executed the deed to D. A. Pollock in settlement of a debt; that he told Pollock, when he asked him to make the deed, that there *819 were some heirs entitled to “some of that,” and Pollock said that it would be all right, ■that when he paid the-debt they could get their part. He testified that he was in possession of the property when he signed the deed and that he retained possession of it after the instrument was executed. He testified that when he had possession of the property he let Boykin Smith have it and that he told him to let Mr. Pollock have the rent on what he owed on the place. Boykin Smith testified that, in 1918, Ben Franklin was in possession of the property and that, in 1919, he let him work it; that as a tenant of Ben Franklin he paid the rent to D. A. Pollock for four or five years, and thereafter he became the tenant of Pollock, beginning about the year 1923; that from that time until the death of Pollock he farmed and cultivated the property as his tenant, and that since his death he has continued to farm and cultivate the property as a tenant of Pollock’s widow and administratrix.

D. A. Pollock is dead and can not speak for himself, but the testimony of the witnesses Franklin and Smith is wholly inconsistent with the conduct of the parties.

The record shows th<it Boykin Smith moved on the property in 1918, at which time Ben Franklin was also residing thereon. Franklin testified that he retained possession after the sale to D. A. Pollock, but his testimony is not correct. The undisputed evidence shows that Ben Franklin moved away from the property the day after he married Lou Reynolds, which was on December 24, 1918, or a little over three months before he sold it to D. A. Pollock.

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Bluebook (online)
186 So. 346, 191 La. 813, 1939 La. LEXIS 1033, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/coleman-v-pollock-la-1939.