Home/Wyoming Supreme Court/Jourdan v. Abbott Construction Company

Jourdan v. Abbott Construction Company

464 P.2d 311, 1970 Wyo. LEXIS 149
CourtWyoming Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 21, 1970
DocketNo. 3782
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 464 P.2d 311 (Jourdan v. Abbott Construction Company) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Wyoming Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Jourdan v. Abbott Construction Company, 464 P.2d 311, 1970 Wyo. LEXIS 149 (Wyo. 1970).

Opinion

Mr. Justice PARKER

delivered the opinion of the court.

Rene and Elfriede Jourdan, husband and wife, sued Abbott Construction Company1 for $20,000 damage because defendant had removed some 200,000 cubic yards of earth, rock and soil from their property and reduced the level of their land lower than the Snake River, rendering it useless. The Abbott company answered, denying generally and alleging that it was a road contractor with the Wyoming State Highway Commission, which had designated the area from whence borrowing materials were to have been obtained and asserting that if it had removed any materials from plaintiffs’ lands such was at the instance of the commission. After some preliminaries, the Abbott company took steps to bring the commission in as a third-party defendant and thereafter stipulated with it that upon the entering of any judgment in favor of plaintiffs and against Abbott a like judgment would be entered in favor of it and against the commission, which arrangement in effect eliminated Abbott; hereinafter the commission will be designated “defendant.”

A motion by defendant for summary judgment was denied and the matter proceeded to trial by jury. At the conclusion of plaintiffs’ case defendant moved for a directed verdict on the ground that plaintiffs had shown no ownership of the land and had not established value. This motion was granted; the court directed a verdict for defendant and accordingly entered judgment from which the appeal is taken.

The factual background of the controversy is uncomplicated. Defendant freely admits the removal of a large quantity of material from a sand and gravel bar, denominated by plaintiffs as an island,2 west of Jourdans’ Lot 4 (sec. 34, T. 40 N., R. 116 W., sixth principal meridian), and across the Snake River channel. To prevail in the trial, plaintiffs needed to prove that the bar was a part of their Lot 4 and if that could be done what damage had resulted from the taking of the materials.

Ownership to the disputed area being pivotal, we preliminarily focus on the title history. The Jourdans were the grantees in a 1965 deed from Henry and Lilly Wes-terhoff, who by mesne conveyances had received the property from James J. Good-rick. He had come into ownership by a February 2, 1938, United States Patent covering “Lots four, five, and seven of Section thirty-four in Township forty north of Range one hundred sixteen west of the Sixth Principal Meridian, Wyoming, containing seventy-five acres and sixty-five hundreths of an acre, according to the Official Plat of the Survey of the said Land, on file in the GENERAL LAND OFFICE.” Adjoining Lot 4 on the west was Lot 8 of Section 34, still owned by the United States and under the supervision of the Bureau of Land Management. Plaintiffs introduced two relevant land office plats in evidence at the trial. One, ■vfiled August 16, 1894, was small scale (40 chains to an inch) and did not disclose the “island.” The other, filed December 16, 1963, did show the “island” with the original easterly meander line of the Snake bisecting it. Defendant introduced in evidence a detailed drawing of the area, and plaintiffs say it was from this “the vital information for delineating appellant’s [sic] boundaries was derived.” A portion of that exhibit is here reproduced together with an inset of a segment of the 1963 plat showing the relative location of Lots 4 and 8.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
464 P.2d 311, 1970 Wyo. LEXIS 149, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/jourdan-v-abbott-construction-company-wyo-1970.