Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Co. v. Ellsworth

54 N.W.2d 800, 237 Minn. 439, 1952 Minn. LEXIS 736
CourtSupreme Court of Minnesota
DecidedAugust 15, 1952
DocketNo. 35,739
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 54 N.W.2d 800 (Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Co. v. Ellsworth) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Minnesota primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Co. v. Ellsworth, 54 N.W.2d 800, 237 Minn. 439, 1952 Minn. LEXIS 736 (Mich. 1952).

Opinion

Christianson, Justice.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Hennepin county district court which determined the boundary line between land of plaintiff Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway Company and land of defendant L. J. Ellsworth and enjoined defendant from maintaining his fence on plaintiff’s land. Lampert Yards, Inc., owner of a leasehold interest in plaintiff’s land, was joined as plaintiff, and the First Federal Savings & Loan Association of Minneapolis, owner of a mortgage on defendant’s land, was joined as defendant.

Both parcels of land in question are within SE% of section 24, township 117, range 22, located in Hennepin county. Defendant Ellsworth is the registered owner of lot A, West Minneapolis, according to the plat thereof recorded in the office of the register of deeds for Hennepin county. Lot A is adjoined on the south by land of which plaintiff railway company is the record owner. The plat of West Minneapolis designates the north line of SW% of SE*4 of section 24 as the south boundary of lot A. The warranty deed by which plaintiff railway company acquired title designates the same north line of SW1^ of SE% of section 24 as the north boundary of plaintiff’s land.

The main question in this case is the proper location of said north line of SW^ of SE14 of section 24.

[441]*441The referee to whom the case was referred found the position of the line to be that which plaintiffs contend it to be, and the district court adopted the referee’s findings. Plaintiff railway company had a survey made by Lee McNally, a registered civil engineer and surveyor of many years’ experience, who appeared as witness for plaintiffs. He had served as city surveyor for the city of Hopkins, wherein the lands in question are located, for about 14 years. McNally, in making the survey, bisected the line between the southeast corner and the east quarter-section corner of section 24 and the line between the south quarter-section corner and the center of section 24. He then connected the mid-points of the two bisected lines to locate the north line of SW^ of SE%. Defendants do not question the surveying procedure used by McNally to locate the line. However, they strongly contest the validity of McNally’s starting points, namely, the southeast corner, the east quarter-section corner, the south quarter-section corner, and the center of the section. Although the original evidence of the section corners and quarter-section corners of the United States government survey of 1854 had been obliterated, the district court found that the points at which they were located were established by reputation and circumstantial evidence and the records of plats in section 24 and in adjoining sections. Defendants contend that this finding is not supported by sufficient evidence and that the district court erred in denying their motion for a dismissal of the action made at the conclusion of plaintiffs’ case in chief and in denying their alternative motion for substituted findings or a new trial.

We shall review at some length the evidence as to the location of the east quarter-section corner of section 24. McNally testified that the corner was marked by an iron post set underground at the intersection of the center line of county road 18 and the north line of Park Ridge Addition to Hopkins. He located this post from ties he himself had made as surveyor in his work around this corner. The basis for his own ties were ties he had obtained from the county surveyor’s office from several sets of notes made by different surveyors. He also testified that one of the ties he used corre[442]*442sponded to a tie established by county surveyor Dahl in 1889 when Dahl resurveyed section 24 pursuant to statute.2 Dahl’s notes state that he found the corner from a tie established by the original government survey. The ties obtained in the W. P. A. resurvey of Hennepin county in 1936 locate the same point that McNally’s ties locate. McNally testified that the corner he found was generally accepted as the true corner and was used by surveyors to establish land lines in that area and to put in public improvements around this corner. The plat of Park Ridge, Hennepin county, recorded in the office of the register of deeds for Hennepin county, shows the east quarter-section corner to be at the intersection of the center line of Washington avenue (county road 18) and the north line of Park Ridge Addition.

This court held in Thoen v. Roche, 57 Minn. 135, 58 N. W. 686, that evidence of common repute as to the location of a quarter-section post was admissible in a boundary dispute between private parties on the ground that better evidence had ceased to exist. Similarly, this court in Lenzmeier v. Ess, 199 Minn. 10, 270 N. W. 677, upheld a finding that determined a boundary line to be in accordance with a survey based upon quarter-section corners accepted as accurate by common consent or reputation.3 In the instant case, there was sufficient evidence from which the court could find that the corner McNally located was the corner established by the original government survey.

Defendants argue that, since the iron post located by McNally was underground and not visible, the public generally could not have known where it was and thus no general reputation could have been formed. However, the corner located by McNally had a reputation among those who used the corner and were concerned with its location, and that, in our opinion, is sufficient.

Defendants also urge that the plat of Park Ridge Addition should not have been admitted to establish the location of the corner on [443]*443the ground. But, in view of the prior testimony of McNally as to the reputation of the corner, we find no error in the admission of the plat.

It would serve no useful purpose to review at length the evidence as to the location of the southeast corner or the south quarter-corner, which is of the same nature as the evidence already related. We have carefully considered the record and exhibits before us and hold that the evidence is sufficient to support the court’s finding as it relates to each of these corners.

The point McNally used as the center of section 24 requires additional consideration. He accepted an iron manhole cover in the center of the intersection of Ninth avenue north and Second avenue north in Hopkins as the center of the section. A. C. Schendel, a civil engineer who appeared as a witness for plaintiffs, testified that he had previously made a survey to locate the center of the section. He established a line from the east quarter-section corner to the west quarter-section corner and a line from the north quarter-section corner to the south quarter-section corner and took the intersection of the two lines as the center of the section. The lines intersected at the manhole cover referred to by McNally. Again, defendants do not quarrel with the surveying method, but question the validity of the corners used as starting points. Upon careful examination of the evidence as to the location of these four corners, we find that it is sufficient to support the district court’s finding.

Since the finding as to the location of the survey corners is supported by sufficient evidence and the surveying procedure used by McNally and Schendel is not questioned, it follows that the finding as to the location of the north line of SW% of SE14 must be sustained.

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Bluebook (online)
54 N.W.2d 800, 237 Minn. 439, 1952 Minn. LEXIS 736, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/minneapolis-st-louis-railway-co-v-ellsworth-minn-1952.