Hackney v. Dillan

9 Ky. Op. 38, 1876 Ky. LEXIS 309
CourtCourt of Appeals of Kentucky
DecidedMarch 14, 1876
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 9 Ky. Op. 38 (Hackney v. Dillan) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Kentucky primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hackney v. Dillan, 9 Ky. Op. 38, 1876 Ky. LEXIS 309 (Ky. Ct. App. 1876).

Opinion

Opinion by

Judge Cofer :

This record furnished most convincing evidence of the necessity for a more rigid enforcement of those rules of pleading and practice which experience had indicated as essential to a correct and expeditious administration of public justice.

About the year 1855, Daniel Roberts sold to the appellants land which was described in the bond for title then executed as “My farm on Roundstone in Rockcastle county, containing 500 acres, be the same more or less.” In the year 1858, Roberts sued the appellants and recovered a judgment at law for the last instalment of purchase money. He transferred the judgment to Smith and Carters and an execution having issued thereon, the appellants, by indorsement on the bond, surrendered to be sold to satisfy the execution the land purchased of Roberts, which is described in the surrender as “the within land,” and in the return of the sheriff as “five hundred acres of land given up by R. R. Hackney, being the same land on which he now lives, and which he purchased of Daniel Roberts.”

Smith and Carter bought the land at sheriff’s sale, and the appellants failed to redeem it, although sold for only a little more than [39]*39one-fourth its appraised value, and only one-third the price they had paid Roberts for, it. Smith and Carters brought suit in June, i860, against the appellant, Roberts, to obtain from Roberts a conveyance of the legal title. In the petition in that case the land is described as a “certain tract of land lying in Rockcastle county on the waters of Roundstone containing about 500 acres,” and the same tract upon which the defendant, Hackney, now lives, “the tract of land that he bought from defendant, Roberts.”

To the petition in that case appellants filed an answer, in which they averred that the land purchased of Roberts consisted of five or six separate tracts, and that they did not lie adjoining each other. A demurrer to the answer was sustained, and no further answer being made it was adjudged “that the .plaintiffs recover of the defendant, Hackney, the land in the petition mentioned,” and “it appearing,” as the judgment recites, “that the legal title to the land in the petition mentioned is in the defendants, Daniel Roberts and Alfred Smith,” J. G. Hazlewood was appointed a commissioner to convey “said land” to Smith and Carters.

The commissioner made a deed in which he described the land as the land set forth in the petition, and in the bond of Roberts to Hackney, and as being, in part, the same land sold by John Quinn to George Procter and by Procter to Roberts, lying on Roundstone in Rockcastle county, “one piece of which is bounded as follows,” and then, after setting out the boundary, it is stated that it contains “in all 500 acres, more or less.” The deed contains, “and the other piece adjoining thereto' and being a piece patented to George Procter, the 2nd day of July, 1846, and bounded as follows:” and, without stating the number of acres, proceeds, “and the party of the first part conveys and confirms unto the party of the second part, all the right, title, interest and claim of the defendants, R. R. Hackney, Alfred Smith and Daniel Roberts, in and to the said tract of land,” etc.

In 1871, Smith and Carters brought a second suit against the appellants in which they set forth the sale of the land by Roberts to him, the execution of the bond for title, the judgment, execution, surrender sale, purchase and conveyance by commissioner, in which they described the land as 500 acres, consisting of “several tracts of separate boundaries.” They also set forth their suit to obtain a conveyance, and alleged that they had recently discovered that the deed was defective in giving the boundaries of the land; that they had caused it to be surveyed and processioned; and they referred to a copy of the survey and processioner’s report for a full description [40]*40of the several tracts, and asked to have the deed reformed so as to describe accurately the boundary of each tract. The petition in that case was dismissed and relief denied in obedi-ence to the mandate of this court.

Pending that litigation Carter and Brother, who had acquired the land from Smith and Carters, leased a portion of it to the appellees, W. R. Dillon and Brother, for a term of five years. Dillon took possession under their lease, and in June, 1874, brought an action at law against the appellant for trespass, and subsequently brought a suit in equity and sued out an injunction to restrain him from cutting and removing timber and tanbark from the land described in their petition. The action for trespass was transferred to equity and consolidated with the suit for injunction, and on final hearing the chancellor made the injunction perpetual, and from that judgment this appeal is prosecuted.

The first question is, Were not the petitions both fatally defective because the land is not described with such convenient certainty as to enable the appellants to know upon what land the trespass complained of was charged to- have been committed, or upon what land they were about to be enjoined from cutting or removing timber, and is not the judgment making the injunction perpetual erroneous for the same reason ?

In the petition in the action for trespass the land is described, or rather referred to, thus: “Bounded as follows, to wit: (see plat on exhibit B). Beginning at figure 1, thence with line to 3, then to 2, thence with line to 9, thence to 18, then to 19 and 20, thence with the line to 21 to 24, thence to- 23, then to 22, then to 30, thence with the meanders of the line to 32, thence again to 1, then to 6, and thence to the beginning-; and for a more particular description of the metes and bounds of said land a copy of the processioner’s and surveyor’s reports of said land is here referred to and made part hereof as exhibit B.”

The description contained in the suit for an injunction is, if possible, more vague and confused than in the other. We find in the transcript what purports to be a copy of a plat and report of processioners, but whether they are the plat and report referred to we can only conjecture, for they are not marked as exhibit B, nor does the clerk say they are the same referred to in the petitions, but we will assume that they are.

It is -entirely clear that without the aid of these exhibits there is nothing in the petitions from which the location and boundary of [41]*41the land of which the appellees claim to have been in possession can be determined. Can an entire failure to describe in the pleadings the subject of action be cured by reference to- an exhibit? It has been repeatedly held that the omission to state in the petition a fact material to the plaintiff’s cause of action cannot be cured by making a paper containing the omitted fact a part of the petition. The same reasons, it seems to us, require that we should hold that a failure to describe the subject of the action cannot be cured by making a paper containing the description a part of the petition.

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163 S.W.2d 463 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976), 1942)

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Bluebook (online)
9 Ky. Op. 38, 1876 Ky. LEXIS 309, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hackney-v-dillan-kyctapp-1876.