Liu v. Fao

2 Am. Samoa 41
CourtHigh Court of American Samoa
DecidedFebruary 24, 1939
DocketNo. 12-1938
StatusPublished

This text of 2 Am. Samoa 41 (Liu v. Fao) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering High Court of American Samoa primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Liu v. Fao, 2 Am. Samoa 41 (amsamoa 1939).

Opinion

DECISION

The land designated Lepuapua on the survey hereinafter referred to was surveyed by Fao and, pursuant to Section 74 of the Codification, offered by him for registration as his property on July 7,1938, the survey being filed with the offer to register. The land is located near the village of Tafuga. Liu, Muli, Poloai, Tua, the Salemeana’i family, Sagapolu and Fonoti each filed separate objections to the proposed registration.

At the trial it appeared from Fao’s statement that he claimed the land as the communal family land of the Fao family. Each objector stated .that that part of his or its land claimed by such objector to have been included in the survey was likewise communal family land.

The tract surveyed in November, 1937, is bounded on the east by the sea and extends inland to the westward a little more than a mile. It averages about a quarter mile in width, and contains 191 acres. Except for a small portion next to the sea, the 191 acre tract is practically all heavy bush land difficult to penetrate. Fao testified that he learned the boundaries of the land Lepuapua from Fao Si-toe on March 20, 1900, Fao Sitoe accompanying him over the land on that day and pointing out the boundaries to him. He also testified that there are two large stones iii the bush near Pava’ia’i which are on the boundary line of Lepuapua. His testimony and the testimony of other witnesses indicate that these are the only two fixed markers in the entire boundary line surrounding the land, which, as [43]*43before stated, is practically all heavy bush except a small part near the sea. Fao stated that he had been over the land a number of times on hunting trips after 1900, but not after he had his leg cut off in 1932.

The surveyed tract has seventy-five (75) sides by actual count on the survey filed. There is only one fixed marker shown on the survey, it being a government cement base tripod signal which an examination by the Court at the time of the Court’s visit to the land showed to have been broken into a dozen scattered pieces with only a small portion of the cement still adhering to the lava rock beneath it, and which small portion will in a short time doubtless disappear making it impossible to retrace the boundary as surveyed. The two large stones above-mentioned as being in the boundary line of Lepuapua are not shown on the survey, no doubt because, as the evidence showed, the surveyed tract does not quite reach to said stones.

Practically all of the boundaries must have been in heavy bush land in 1900 as they are now since it was apparent from the Court’s inspection of the land and from the evidence that except for a small portion near the sea the land has never been cleared of bush.

That Fao could remember with any degree of accuracy the location of a great number of unmarked boundaries in heavy bush thirty years after he was shown the same on March 20, 1900 — granted that Fao Sitoe knew where they were — is difficult to believe. Yet, if this land is to be registered as Fao land, this Court must believe that very thing, as will be later apparent from the decision. This Court judicially knows that the human mind is such that it is scarcely to be believed that he could have retraced accurately the boundaries through heavy bush, all of them unmarked except the one identified by the two stones, even as long as three months after he was shown the boundaries. Yet we are asked to believe that under the circumstances [44]*44he remembered accurately these boundaries after, not three (3) months, but after thirty years.

The evidence showed that prior to the making of the survey in November, 1937, a working party under the direction of Sarnia, a member of the Fao family, spent two or three weeks cutting a path through the bush along the boundaries of the surveyed tract so that a survey could be made following the path so cut. Fao directed Sarnia to have the path cut. According to the testimony this path made through the bush did not at all places follow the boundaries of the land Lepuapua as shown to Fao by Fao Sitoe. Fao told Sarnia to have the path cut along the north side of the surveyed area in a straight line for about a mile back from the sea in a direction that is westerly, then cut-in a southerly direction staying within the confines of Lepuapua on the westerly side and then in a straight line on the south side in what appears by the survey to be an easterly direction, to the land of Salemeaga’i and thence by the land of Salemeaga’i back almost to the sea. Fao’s directions were to have the path cut so as to make the land included within the path substantially a rectangle. We think from the evidence that it was Fao’s intent to have the path cut so as not to take in any of the lands of adjoining land owners, several of whom are the seven objectors in this case. There is no reason to suppose that Sarnia did not try to follow Fao’s directions as best he could. However, the measure of success that Sarnia had in cutting a straight path through the bush for a mile on the north side of the surveyed area is shown by an examination of the plat of the survey which followed the path. There are more than thirty boundaries shown on the north side and along the path, no two of which have the same direction. The bearings of these last mentioned boundaries range all the way from 303° 51' clockwise from north to 224° 27' clockwise from north. The boundary with the latter bearing comes within less [45]*45than eleven degrees of being at right angles with the boundary having the first described bearing.

Samia testified that he knew the boundaries of the land Lepuapua and that he cut the path so as not to have any of it outside of those boundaries. He received his information as to the location of the boundaries from Fao, Fao pointing them out to him while on a hunting trip in Lepuapua. The last time Fao, according to his own testimony, was on the land Lepuapua with Samia was in 1931, the year before Fao had his leg cut off. Samia stated that he went over the land with Fao before Fao had his leg cut off as before stated (it was cut off in 1932), and that he (Samia) was about eighteen or nineteen years old at the time. Samia also testified that he hadn’t been over the land with Fao for seven or eight years which would make his last trip over the land with Fao six or seven years before the survey was made in November, 1937. Fao .testified that on the above-mentioned hunting trip he pointed out the same boundaries of Lepuapua to Samia that Fao Sitoe had pointed out to him thirty years before. It should be stated again that most of these boundaries were in heavy bush difficult to penetrate and with no markers to define them except the one marked by the two stones at the westerly end of the tract.

The testimony in favor of Fao on the boundaries in the bush comes down to this: On March 20, 1900, Fao Sitoe pointed out to Fao where the boundaries of Lepuapua were in this bush. Some thirty years later Fao while on a hunting trip in Lepuapua with Samia, an 18 or 19 year old boy, recalls the boundaries (unmarked except as to one with the two stones to define it) and points them out to Samia who, relying on what Fao had told him six or seven years before as to their location, cuts a path for the survey about two miles long through the bush and does it so accurately that he doesn’t take in any land belonging to the adjoining land owners.

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Bluebook (online)
2 Am. Samoa 41, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/liu-v-fao-amsamoa-1939.