Hill v. Beaver

454 S.W.2d 718, 61 Tenn. App. 434, 1969 Tenn. App. LEXIS 294
CourtCourt of Appeals of Tennessee
DecidedMay 28, 1969
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 454 S.W.2d 718 (Hill v. Beaver) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hill v. Beaver, 454 S.W.2d 718, 61 Tenn. App. 434, 1969 Tenn. App. LEXIS 294 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1969).

Opinion

CARNEY, P. J. (W.S.).

The complainant below, Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill, and her lessees, John Chisolm, Marshall Huffman, and W. Y. Huffman, all appeal from a decree of the Chancery Court of Tipton County dismissing their original bill for an injunction against the defendant, Mrs. Cordon Beaver. In July, 1964, after purchasing her 67-acre farm in Tipton County, Tennessee, on February 24, 1964, the defendant, Mrs. Cordon Beaver, erected gates with locks across a field road running 2,500 feet northward from the Holly Crove-Beaver Road across her farm to a 50-acre farm owned by the complainant, Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill. The bill to remove the gates and establish a legal right to use the roadway was filed March 26, 1965, by Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill, her son-in-law, John Chisolm, who rented the farm from her, and by Marshall Huffman and W. V. Huffman, who sub-rented the farm for pasture purposes from Mr. John Chisolm.

[436]*436The farm of Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill is not located on any public road and there is no record of it ever being on any public road. Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill and her immediate predecessors in title have been using the field road across the 67-acre farm now owned by the defendant, Mrs. Gordon Beaver, as the only means of egress and ingress to the public road for over sixty years at the time of the filing of the original bill.

Complainants averred that the roadAvay was a way of necessity, that both tracts of land had belonged to a common grantor, namely J. B. Hall, who conveyed the 50-acre dominant tract now owned by Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill to one W. C. Sturgis, the complainant’s predecessor in title and later conveyed the servient 67-acre tract to one S. D. Beaver, a predecessor in title to the defendant, Mrs. Gordon Beaver, and averred further that the complainant, Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill, and her predecessors in title had also obtained an easement over the lands of Mrs. Beaver by use of said road by prescription of over twenty years adverse user. There are no houses on either of the two tracts of land though at one time there were two houses on the 50-acre farm owned by Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill and one house on the farm owned by Mrs. Gordon Beaver. Mrs. Hill had the two houses which had been empty a long time, probably because of no TVA electricity, torn down in the early 1950’s.

The Holly Grove-Beaver Boad was formerly known as the Brighton-Bandolph Boad and is now a blacktop well-traveled county road. The roadway in question is only a dirt or field road and leads northward across the 67-acre farm owned by Mrs. Gordon Beaver only to the farm of Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill. Both farms are now and have been used mostly for pasture and grassland farming for [437]*437several years and therefore the roadway has been traveled seldom by Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill’s tenants and lessees.

The complainant, Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill, inherited the 50-aere farm in 1950' from her aunt, Mrs. Jennie L. Morrison. The date her aunt, Mrs. Morrison, obtained title to the 50-acre tract is not shown but Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill, the complainant, testified that she had known the farm since 1902; that she had often traveled the dirt road across the Beaver land to her farm since 1902 and that at all times since 1902 to the present time the road in question was the only means of getting to and from her 50-acre farm and that it was so used by her uncle and aunt and their tenants and later by the complainant and her tenants continuously under claim of light without asking permission of anyone until the gates were erected and locked by the defendant, Mrs. Gordon Beaver, in July, 1964.

Mrs. Bill Thompson and her sister, Mrs. Norma May, of Ripley, Lauderdale County, Tennessee, were the owners of the 67-acre tract of land and sold it to Mrs. Beaver, their aunt, on February 25, 1964. They owned the land from 1959 to 1963 and it was in the Soil Bank and rented to the IT. S. Department of Agriculture through the Tipton County ASC office. They lived in Ripley, Tennessee, and did not have any knowledge of other people using the farm road in question. Mr. Thompson testified that he looked after the farm for his wife and sister-in-law and put the farm in the Soil Bank; that he knew the roadway was there but he did not know other people were using it. He seldom went on the farm.

The defendant, Mrs. Gordon Beaver, testified that at the time she purchased the farm on February 25, 1964, [438]*438she did not know of any easement in*the road on her property and she denied that the complainants had an easement and that her purpose in erecting and locking the gates along the road was to close it and to use another entrance from the public road into her farm. She did not deny the allegations of the original bill that she had lived in the neighborhood where the two tracts of land are located most of her natural life and that she was familiar with the long continued use of the road by the complainant and complainant’s tenants at the time the defendant purchased the property. There is testimony in the record to indicate that Mrs. Beaver’s husband, Gordon Beaver, operated a store in this community and one of his former employees prior to 1949' delivered groceries and supplies over said road to some farm families living on the 50-acre tract owned by Mrs. Hill.

Mr. James Rose, manager of the Tipton County office of the Agricultural Stabilization Committee, testified that for the years 1959 through 1963 the 50-acre farm of the complainant, Mrs. Hill, was also in the Soil Bank and that he visited the complainant’s farm about five times each year during this period as part of the duties of his office. He said that he used the roadway in question each time to get to and from the complainant Mrs. Hill’s farm.

The overwhelming proof is that the road through Mrs. Beaver’s farm terminated at the south line of the 50-acre farm owned by the complainant, Mrs. Maye Morrison Hill, and that more than twenty years ago there had been gaps at the northern and southern termini of the roadway indicating to anyone who might see them that the gaps were designed to be let down so as to permit traffic from the Maye Morrison Hill property to and from the roadway.

[439]*439Defendant’s remaining testimony was to the effect that the road was rendered practically impassable during the winter months by the winter rains and that it was a seldom traveled road.

The Chancellor held the case of Blakemore v. Matthews, 154 Tenn. 334, 285 S.W. 567, was controlling; that the case of House v. Close, 48 Tenn.App. 341, 346 S.W.2d 445, was distinguishable and not controlling; and that the use of the road by the complainant and her predecessors in title was purely permissive and she and her predecessors had not obtained an easement by prescription and that the complainant and her lessees and tenants could use the right-of-way only by the consent and permission of the defendant, Mrs. Gordon Beaver. Accordingly, he dismissed the original bill.

In our opinion the Chancellor was in error in deciding the ease upon the authority of Blakemore v. Matthews, supra. The substance of the opinion in Blakemore is shown in the following quotation:

“The complainant’s idea seems to be that, where it appears that one has traveled over the private road of another, without objection, for more than 20 years, an indefeasible easement is thereby acquired in said road.

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Bluebook (online)
454 S.W.2d 718, 61 Tenn. App. 434, 1969 Tenn. App. LEXIS 294, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hill-v-beaver-tennctapp-1969.