93 Ky. 444 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1892
DELIVEBED THE OPINION OF THE COUBT.
Appellants, about sixteen in number, owners respectively of lots or parcels of land in Jefferson county, brought this action October 27, 1890, against the city of Louisville, and D. E. Murphy, city assessor, for a judg
March 9, 1868, “An Act to extend the boundary line of the city of Louisville,” was passed by the Legislature, whereby the city boundary was set out and defined, that part of it now in controversy being thus described : The place where the disputed line begins, the parties agree, is at intersection of a line drawn from Shipp avenue 210 feet south, and one from Third street 210 feet west; and it runs according to call of the statute, “thence southwardly and parallel with Third street to the south line of the House of Refuge lands, and following-the boundary of said land to Shipp avenue.”
The House of Refuge land appears to have been at that time a tract of about eighty acres, the title of which was in the city of Louisville, and there is no dispute about the location of the south line thereof. Third street, the general course of which is south from the Ohio river, at date of the act of 1868 terminated at Shipp avenue, the general course of which toward Third street appears from the surveyor’s map filed to be southwest; and a line 210 feet south of and parallel with it was by the act made part of the city boundary.
To run the line in dispute strictly according to the call is impossible, because Third street did not then extend south beyond Shipp avenue. But there was at that time a thoroughfare called “ Third Street Road,” the course of which, however, is about south 10° 50' west, instead of
The indirect and circuitous course of the city boundary from where it leaves Shipp avenue indicates an intention of the .Legislature to include within the city limits the House of Refuge land; yet if the line is fixed as appellants claim, a very considerable part of it will be excluded, while a comparatively small part is outside the line claimed by appellee.
We thus have a condition of uncertainty as to the proper direction one of the boundary lines of a city shall run, necessarily subject to a dispute between the parties interested, and determinable |only by authoritative construction of the statute.
We do not see why in such case a practical interpretation, adopted and acted on by the lot-owners as well as
We are therefore of opinion the boundary line claimed by appellee has been fully and legally established. Judgment affirmed.