Reynolds v. Wall

1937 OK 441, 72 P.2d 505, 181 Okla. 110, 113 A.L.R. 417, 1937 Okla. LEXIS 58
CourtSupreme Court of Oklahoma
DecidedJune 29, 1937
DocketNo. 27368.
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 1937 OK 441 (Reynolds v. Wall) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Reynolds v. Wall, 1937 OK 441, 72 P.2d 505, 181 Okla. 110, 113 A.L.R. 417, 1937 Okla. LEXIS 58 (Okla. 1937).

Opinion

BUSBY, J.

This action is in the nature of a suit for ejectment and to quiet title. It was commenced on October 22, 1935, by Pauline Wall against A. W. Reynolds and wife to enjoin the latter from using a portion of a residential lot in the city of Tulsa and to quiet title to the same in the plaintiff and for damages for certain injuries to said premises alleged to have been commuted by the defendants.

The trial court rendered judgment generally in favor of the plaintiff, and the defendants appeal.

The parties will be referred to herein as they appeared in the trial court.

The plaintiff and defendants are the owners of two' adjacent 50-foot lots with separate residences and a common garage and driveway located thereon.

Plaintiff purchased her lot on August 28, 1920, from one J. L. Sumner, who in 1919 had shared with the Reynolds the expense of building the garage and driveway. The garage contained storage space for four automobiles, while the driveway was wide enough for the driving of two cars side by side thereon. The intention of Sumner and Reynolds was to construct the g'arage and driveway so that the center line of the driveway and the party wall separating their respective halves of the garage would coincide with the boundary line between their lots. After some yeSars of use by the parties of the garage and the driveway as constructed and the observance by them of the line marked thereon as the boundary line of their lots, the defendant Reynolds procured a private survey of the same. This survey showed that the center line of the garage and driveway lay a distance of less than 48 feet west from the plaintiff’s claimed east boundary line. A later survey obtained by the plaintiff from the county surveyor fixed the true boundary line in the same place as the one obtained by Reynolds. About five or six years previous to the filing of this action, the defendant erected a wire fence extending from the middle line of the rear end of the garage to the rear boundary line of the lots and the plaintiff erected 'a low wire fence with iron posts on a line a few inches east of the middle line of the driveway and extending several feet in front of the garage. After the two surveys the plaintiff and defendant Reynolds had a conversation in which Reynolds agreed to separate that part of the garage standing on his lot from the part standing on the plaintiff’s lot, using the boundary line established by the surveys as the point of division. The defendants had constructed an iron fence in the driveway on the boundary line fixed by the surveys, but a few days later, they tore it down and reset it in line with the center of the g'arage.

A few months before this action was filed, the tenants on plaintiff’s premises began attempts to use and encroach upon the disputed strip of driveway under claim of right.

Plaintiff’s petition is divided into four parts, each of which purports to state a separate cause of action, and in the aggregate prays for a permanent injunction against the use by the defendants of the disputed strip, together with damages to the driveway and for loss of rent and for attorney’s fees and a quieting of plaintiff’s title to said strip as well as the removal of the fence and removal of that part of the garage located on said strip.

Defendants’ answer made the contention that a subsisting boundary line between the two properties was established by the oral building agreement had between themselves ’and plaintiff’s grantor, Sumner, and was marked by the party wall in the garage and by the line indented down the middle of the concrete driveway. They further pleaded that the boundary so estab *112 lished. was supported by adverse possession for more than 20 ye'ars, in all of which the plaintiff had acquiesced.

To this answer the plaintiff filed a reply in the form of a general denial.

After the facts as hereinbefore set forth had been established by the evidence, the trial court rendered 'a judgment granting plaintiff possession of, and quieting her title to, the entire lot bounded as shown by the surveys and ordering the defendant to remove the fences they had placed in the driveway and in the rear of the garage and perpetually enjoining them from going upon s'aid lot, except that an easement was granted the defendants for the use of the east half of the garage as long as it should remain in its present location.

1. The defendants’ petition in error contains eight assignments, but all of these except two pertain to the proposition that the trial court’s judgment is not sustained by the law concerning the establishment of boundary lines between adjoining tracts of land. In their briefs, they seek to 'apply the rule of estoppel by acquiescence to defeat the plaintiff’s right to recovery and rely on the decisions in the cases of Midland Valley Railroad Co. v. Imler, 130 Okla. 79, 262 P. 1067, and Roetzel v. Rush, 172 Okla. 465, 45 P. (2d) 518. In our opinion, however, the ease at bar cannot be brought within the rules followed in those cases. In the .latter case, the common owner of two adjoining tracts had changed or reestablished the intervening- boundary between two tracts of land by conveying the properties into separate ownership. To that ease we applied the reasoning of the New York court in the case of Herse v. Mazza, 100 App. Div. 59, 91 N. Y. S. 778, in which opinion the key to the distinguishing feature in the present ease is given in the following words:

“The location does not rest upon 'acquiescence in an erroneous boundary, but upon .the fact that the true location was made. * * *»

In the present case there may have been apparent acquiescence for a time in 'an erroneous boundary, but there was never any vehicle by which such a line was set up as the true boundary line.

The Midland Valley Case, supra, was a case of acquiescence and the facts found by the trial court warranted the application of the rule concerning practical location quoted therein from 9 Corpus Juris, 242, as follows:

“ ‘If adjoining proprietors deliberately erect monuments or fences or make improvements on a line between their lands on the understanding that it is the true line, it will amount to a practical location. * * *’ (Emphasis ours.)

“And on page 243, it is stated:

“ ‘A practical location not induced by fraud or mistake will conclude the parties and their privies, although it may subsequently, after long acquiescence, be ascertained to vary from the course called for in the deeds. * * *’ ”

The rest of the foregoing paragraph in Corpus Juris reads as follows:

“* * * or grants under which the parties claimed prior to agreement on the line; but a line run through pure mistake and ignorance is not a practical location, even though silently acquiesced in by an adjoining owner.” (Emphasis ours.)

And again at page 244, we find the following- quotation:

(Section 196) 4. “By Recognition and Acquiescence, a. In General.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Threet v. Polk
620 P.2d 467 (Court of Civil Appeals of Oklahoma, 1980)
International Paper Company v. J. T. Bridges
279 F.2d 536 (Fifth Circuit, 1960)
Buckner v. Russell
1958 OK 237 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1958)
Irelan v. Hall
1956 OK 63 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1956)
Kasner v. Reynolds
1954 OK 56 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1954)
Eckroat v. Landrum
1951 OK 185 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1951)
Lake Ex Rel. Benton v. Crosser
1950 OK 49 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1950)
Riddle v. Brann
1942 OK 24 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1942)
Lewis v. Smith
1940 OK 276 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1940)
Johnson v. Whelan
1940 OK 68 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1940)
White v. Saling
1939 OK 168 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1939)
Rocher v. Williams
1938 OK 376 (Supreme Court of Oklahoma, 1938)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
1937 OK 441, 72 P.2d 505, 181 Okla. 110, 113 A.L.R. 417, 1937 Okla. LEXIS 58, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/reynolds-v-wall-okla-1937.