Schultz v. Kellar

136 So. 220, 17 La. App. 651, 1931 La. App. LEXIS 257
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedJune 16, 1931
DocketNo. 764
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 136 So. 220 (Schultz v. Kellar) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Schultz v. Kellar, 136 So. 220, 17 La. App. 651, 1931 La. App. LEXIS 257 (La. Ct. App. 1931).

Opinion

ELLIOTT, J.

Mary Smallwood Schultz, Louisa Smallwood, and Augustine Small-wood Cherry claim as the heirs of Paul Smallwood and of Juliet Batiste, his wife, to be the owners of 80 acres of land situated in the parish of St. Tammany, in a petitory action against Henry Kellar, A. J. Planche, Sr., Madeline Planche Burns, Victor E. Planche, August J. Planche, Jr., and Felix A. Planche.

The land- is described as the S. % of S E. % Sec. 8, Tp.s9 S., R. 13 E., in the district of lands subject to sale1 at- New Orleans, La. The case has been previously before us on a question of nonjoinder of parties defendant, and was remanded, in order that further parties might be made. Upon the remand, the plaintiffs proceeded under an amended and. supplemental petition making August J. Planche, Sr., Madeline Planche Burns, . Victor E. Planche, August J. Planche, Jr., and Felix A. Planche, parties defendant, upon which these new parties called on the plaintiffs to elect whether they would, as to them, proceed as plaintiffs in a petitory action or under the provisions of Act 38 of 1908.

The lower court required plaintiffs to elect which they declined ,to do, and thereupon their suit was dismissed. This court set aside that dismissal, and the case was again returned to the lower court.

Upon this last return, the defendants interposed against plaintiffs’ suit the prescription of one year, under section 5 of Act 80 of 1888. *

That of three and ten years under Act 185 of 1904.'

That of” three years to validate tax titles.

That of ten years under good and valid title in good faith translative of ownership coupled with possession.

That of thirty years under good and valid title in good faith translative of ownership coupled with possession. v

The minutes of the lower court concerning the present proceedings were not brought up, but the record indicates that these pleas of prescription were referred to the merits. The defendants then under reserve of their exceptions filed an answer. The case was tried on the merits [653]*653and submitted to the court for decision, when .the court, taking up first the pleas of prescription, sustained them all except that of one year, as to which the court did not rule.

The prescriptive defenses acted on again brought about the dismissal of plaintiffs’ suit.

The plaintiffs have appealed. The defendants, without answering the appeal, urge that the judgment be affirmed.

Defendants in their answer, reiterating their pleas of prescription, allege ownership and actual possession under duly recorded titles which they deraign back through mesne and intervening conveyances to an adjudication made to the state for taxes assessed against Paul Smallwood during the year 1882.

The judgment appealed from being entirely based on defendants’ pleas of prescription of three, ten, and thirty years, our review must be limited to the questions acted on by the lower court.

The plaintiffs are the children and sole heirs at law of Paul Smallwood and Juliet, his wife. Paul Smallwood homesteaded the land in question as an actual settler under the Acts of Congress, receiving a patent therefor dated December 1, 1876. The patent was obtained during the lifetime of plaintiffs’ mother, but within a few years thereafter she departed this life.

Paul Smallwood lived on the land, fenced and cultivated a field, but the evidence indicates that at the time of his death, which took place about 1891, 1892, he had ceased to live on the land, but continued to live nearby.. A possible reason on his part for leaving the land may have been the adjudication to the state and the sale by the state to Julian Atlow, which had taken place previous to his death.

Mary Schultz, one of the plaintiffs, testifies on this subject:

“Q. Up to the time of his death where was his home?
“A. We took him to the city when he was sick and he died in the city.
“Q. Before he died?
“A. The old place but he was living at the brick yard close to his work.”

This plaintiff living in New Orleans, came back to visit the old place; the evidence does not enable us to state exactly the time of her return, but it must have been about 1895. At that time she says the house, fences and improvements were gone and no one lived there.

Other testimony indicates that for fifteen or twenty years after Paul Smallwood died the place where his improvements and field had been grew up in bushes, and actual possession was not evidenced any more until about 1917, when defendants inclosed it as part of a pasture of several thousand acres.

In speaking of plaintiffs’ suit against the defendants, we have called it a. petitory action because the evidence shows that the plaintiffs, are out of possession and have been for twenty-five or thirty years or more, and that the defendants are in actual possession under just title duly recorded, and have been since about 1917, when the property in question was by them inclosed in a pasture. It is shown that defendants deraign title back to an adjudication to the state of Louisiana made April 21, 1883, on account of state and parish taxes due by Paul Smallwood for the year 1882 for the property described as follows:

“160 acres of land and improvements east of Bayou Lacombe situated in the [654]*654Parish of St. Tammany, assessed in the name of Paul Smallwood.”

The adjudication is evidenced by an authentic act in the form of a title dated July 5, 1883. The Act of Adjudication refers to Acts 77 of 1880 and 96 of 1882 as, authority for the adjudication to the state.

Act 96 of 1882, sec. 52, directs the sheriff, in case no bid is made for the, amount of taxes due, .to bid in the property for the state.

The record shows a tax receipt offered in evidence by the plaintiffs showing the payment of state and parish taxes on the property in question by Paul Smallwood for the year 1889; but the date of the receipt inclines us to the view that it does not show a payment of the taxes due on thisr land for this year by Paul Smallwood himself, but is in some way connected with the payment of the taxes due on the land by Julian Atlow, who in buying the property from the state was bound to pay all the taxes due thereon by Smallwood. It is not claimed in the petition of the plaintiffs that Paul Smallwood paid the taxes due ón the land, or that the adjudication to the state was ever redeemed.

The record shows that the sheriff of the parish of St. Tammany, proceeding under Act 80 of 1888, advertised and offered for sale the property in question under the same description whereby it had been adjudicated to the state, and at this offering the property was sold to Julian Atlow. (Spelled in the deed, Atto.) This sale was made December 21, 1889.

The original title to the state and from the state to Atlow was not produced, but the conveyance books of the parish of St. Tammany in which the titles had been recorded were offered in evidence showing the registry of these titles therein. Plaintiffs objected, urging that the conveyance books were not admissible in evidence. The objection was overruled. The ruling was correct. The adjudication to the state and the sale from the state to Atlow could be and was proved in the way stated. Act 43 Ex. Sess., of 1870, Civil Code, art. 2270.

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Bluebook (online)
136 So. 220, 17 La. App. 651, 1931 La. App. LEXIS 257, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/schultz-v-kellar-lactapp-1931.