2 F. Cas. 781 | U.S. Cir. Ct. | 1822
charged the jury. The first, and most important question for your decision is, whether the plaintiff has made out such a title to the land now in controversy as will authorise you to give a verdict in his favour? If he has not, your verdict ought to be for the defendant, however imperfect his title may be. The first question is one purely of law; and the opinion of the court is, that the title of the plaintiff is altogether defective. We go back to the year 1732, at which time the title of J. H. Sprogel to the large tract of land, of which that in question was a part, was unexceptionable. But in that year he mortgaged 7500 acres of that tract, including the land in controversy, to Henry Soames, for securing the payment of £75. The money not having been paid at the time stipulated, Sprogle, in the succeeding year, in consideration of the debt aforesaid, and of an additional advance, released to Soames his equity of redemption in the mortgaged premises, whereby Soames became entitled to the estate therein, both legal and equitable. The next inquiry is,. whether, by any subsequent act of Soames, or of any person claiming under him, the estate became revested in the Spro-gle family. It is insisted by the plaintiff’s counsel that the deed executed by Samuel Mickel produced this effect. With respect to that deed, it is to be premised, that it makes its appearance before the court in a very questionable shape, if indeed, it be entitled to all the importance which is attached to it by the plaintiff’s counsel. It is not even dated; and so little attention seems to have been bestowed upon it, that the common and neces
The title of the plaintiff being thus obviously defective, I should not deem it necessary to notice that of the defendant, founded upon length of possession, If the plaintiff’s counsel did not seem to have misunderstood the decision of this court in the case of Potts v. Gilbert, [Case No. 11,347,] which was altogether different from the present. In that, the persons, of whose possessions the defendant sought to avail himself, were mere intruders, or squatters, as they are called, upon a vacant possession, without title or col-our of title, between whom and the defendant there was no privity. The court laid it down, that the title of the plaintiff drew to it a constructive possession sufficient to bar the running of the act of limitations against him. That when that possession was disturbed by the actual possession of A, a continuance of such possession for twenty-one years would have divested the right of the owner to the particular part so possessed, and vested a right in A. But that if, after possessing the land for a number of years, short of those mentioned in the statute, A left the land and B took possession, the constructive possession of the owner revived, and B could not tack to his possession that of A the prior occupant, so as to make out a twenty-one years possession against the real owner of the land. These were the principles of that decision. In this case, Preston entered under a claim and colour of title derived under Soames, although the title papers recited in his deed to Guiger have not been produced; and in 1794 he conveyed the land, of which the tract in question is a part, to Guiger, from whom the title is regularly deduced to the defendant. No two cases therefore can be more unlike than Potts v. Gilbert, [supra,] and the present. Upon the whole, the defendant is clearly entitled to your verdict.
The plaintiff suffered a non-suit.