Crisp v. Parker

516 S.W.2d 10, 1974 Tex. App. LEXIS 2767
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedNovember 13, 1974
Docket12176
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 516 S.W.2d 10 (Crisp v. Parker) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Crisp v. Parker, 516 S.W.2d 10, 1974 Tex. App. LEXIS 2767 (Tex. Ct. App. 1974).

Opinion

SHANNON, Justice.

This appeal concerns an effort by co-tenants, appellants Clara Crisp and Willie Jefferson, to establish title by limitation to land as against other co-tenants. The district court of Williamson County entered a judgment contrary to appellants’ claim of limitation title. We will affirm that judgment.

The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Georgetown filed a petition in the district court to condemn the land in controversy, a lot located in west Georgetown, for the purpose of clearing that lot for “redevelopment and re-use” by that Agency. In that suit, two of the defendants, appellants here, filed a cross-action against the balance of the defendants, appellees here, all being relatives of either Vira Maxwell or Lucinda Smith. 1 By their cross-action appellants claimed that they were entitled to all proceeds to be awarded in the condemnation proceeding. This was so, appellants avowed, because they owned an undivided one-fourth interest in the lot and had acquired title to the balance of those interests as against appellees, their co-tenants, by authority of the three, ten, and twenty-five year statutes of limitation. Vernon’s Tex.Rev.Civ.Stat.Ann. arts. 5507, 5510, and 5519.

The cross-action, including the claims of the respective parties to the damages to be awarded in the condemnation proceeding, was severed from the original condemnation suit. Judgment was entered in the original suit condemning the lot and requiring the Urban Renewal Agency to pay the sum of $6,000.00 into the registry of the court. Upon trial to the court, judgment was entered in the severed suit, contrary to appellants’ claim of title by limitation.

By two points of error appellants contend that the court erred in finding that the law and facts were contrary to their claim of title by virtue of the ten and twenty-five year statutes of limitation. These points will be overruled.

The lot in controversy was deeded in 1930 by Archie Parker and wife to Lucinda Shanks for life with remainder to Vira Maxwell and Lucinda Smith. After that time Lucinda Shanks lived in the old house situated on that lot. During the .lifetime of Lucinda Shanks, appellant, Clara Crisp, and her husband, Willie (Sanko) Crisp, moved into this house with Lucinda. San-ko was the son of the remainderman, Lucinda Smith. Lucinda Shanks died in 1932, and after her death Clara and Sanko remained in the house where they reared ten children.

Vira Maxwell lived in Georgetown only a short distance from Clara and Sanko. Sanko’s mother, Lucinda Smith, did not live in Williamson County. Some of the witnesses testified that Vira permitted Clara and Sanko to continue living in the house because she was fond of her relative, Sanko, and that, after all, he and his large family needed a place “to stay.” Witness Willie Parker testified that Sanko was allowed to remain in the house not only because he had no house but also because Sanko “ . . . wouldn’t get out to try to get no house to put his family in.” Though Sanko had died, Clara was still living in the house at the time the Urban Renewal Agency began the proceedings to condemn the lot.

Vira died in 1965. Lucinda Smith died some time before 1968. Through the years and before those deaths, Clara and Sanko *12 placed some improvements on the lot. The house previously had “a half a front fence,” and Clara and Sanko “added the other half to it.” They also added two rooms to the “big” house. In the 1930’s they built an additional two-room house on a corner of the lot, where their daughter, appellant Willie Jefferson, lived. Some improvements were made to that house in 1948. In 1959 or 1960, a small garage was built on the lot. The testimony was conflicting as to whether Sanko or his half-brother, George Parker, built the garage.

The property was rendered in the name of the Lucinda Shanks Estate late in the 1960’s when the property was rendered in the name of Willie Crisp. Clara testified that Sanko paid the county, city, and school taxes before his death and that afterward she “taken to paying them.” She said that she would fall behind in the payment of the taxes but then she “ . would pay more, you see, catching them up.” An inspection of the tax records made exhibits in the statement of facts shows that the school taxes were not paid from 1956 to 1972, and that the city taxes were not paid from 1948 to 1972 with the exception of the years 1955, 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970.

Clara testified that neither she nor San-ko, to her knowledge, had told Vira Maxwell or Lucinda Smith that they were claiming the property. In fact, on cross-examination Clara stated that she was not claiming the property against Vira. Mattie Gaines who had lived in Georgetown for eighty-nine years and who was well acquainted in west Georgetown, testified that she had never heard from anyone that Sanko or Clara were claiming the property.

The disposition of appellants’ first two points of error is controlled by the application of the principles stated in Todd v. Bruner, 365 S.W.2d 155 (Tex. 1963), to the facts in this appeal. Justice Norvell wrote in that opinion:

“For respondent’s case to stand, notice of repudiation must have been brought home to petitioners or their predecessors in title prior to December 1, 1943
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“Insofar as the true owner of property is concerned, there is a vast difference between the notice of adverse claim conveyed by the presence of a stranger in possession and that of a cotenant in possession. It is not unusual for one coten-ant to have exclusive possession and make beneficial use of lands for rather long periods of time and ordinarily such use is with the acquiescence of the other cotenants. Cotenancy is a common form of land tenure when owners belong to the same family. This results largely by the operation of the statute of descent and distribution and commonly followed customs and practices relating to the making of devises of lands. The legal presumption follows a generally recognized habit or practice based upon years of observed experience. The statutes of limitation are statutes of repose. They are intended to settle and support land titles and are not designed to afford a method whereby one member of a family may appropriate property belonging to his kinsman. Hence the legal requirement that notice of repudiation of the common title should be clear, unequivocal and unmistakable. . . . Coten-ancy-limitation situations often present the somewhat anomalous argument in which- one cotenant in effect says, 'Although I lived within a few miles of my cotenant, I never told him of my repudiation of our common title, but my actions with reference to the land itself were so unequivocal and notorious that he must have known of the repudiation that I never disclosed to him.’ The real property statutes of limitations as to co-tenants are not designed to run in secrecy and silence .
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Bluebook (online)
516 S.W.2d 10, 1974 Tex. App. LEXIS 2767, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/crisp-v-parker-texapp-1974.