Veasey v. Williams

11 Del. 563

• Court: Supreme Court of Delaware
• Decided: June 5, 1883
• Status: Published

Opinion

The Court, Comegys, C. J.,

charged the jury. This is an action of trespass guare clausem fregit, or for trespass upon land, in which the legal title to it may become involved, but never as against a mere wrong-doer when the plaintiff is in the actual and exclusive possession of it. And when it appears that the parties, plaintiff' and defendant in such an action, are in what is termed mixed possession of the land in dispute, as where it is woodland and both cut wood upon it and take it away for their respective uses, and the place where this is done is within the known metes and bounds of either of them, the law adjudges it to be the land and in the possession of the one within whose boundary lines it lies. And a dividing boundary line may be fixed and established by mutual consent and the act of the parties between them, and so long as they and those claiming under them respectively continue to hold and divide the possession of it by such boundary line, it will as to the possession of it continue in force and operation between them. There has been no plea of the act of limitations pleaded in the action, and therefore the time when it accrued cannot be material. The agreement in writing and the award of the referee under it in evidence before the jury did not operate like a deed of conveyance to give a legal title to the plaintiff, or to Jacquett under whom he claims, to the land in dispute up to the boundary line fixed by them, but it did establish the line by the mutual act and express consent and executed contract of the parties to it, as the boundary or division line between them of the land in dispute, and it could not be avoided without, at least, going into a court of chancery for that purpose, if indeed, there was any ground whatever for that.

The plaintiff had a verdict for eighteen dollars.