28 Cal. 219 | Cal. | 1865
By the Court,
Ejectment to recover a portion of the lot No. 1,188 in the City of San Francisco. Both parties claimed under the prior possession of their respective grantors, and both claimed title under the “ Van Ness Ordinance,” and the statute ratifying and confirming the same, and the plaintiff also relied upon adverse possession for a period exceeding five years before the entry of defendants. The jury found for the plaintiff. The defendants moved for a new trial, and the grounds relied on are errors in law, committed by the Court and excepted to by them. Insufficiency of the evidence to justify the verdict is
1. The plaintiff having introduced in evidence a deed executed to Benjamin T. Black, of San Francisco, in 1859, offered in evidence a deed of the same premises to the plaintiff, executed by Benjamin T. Black, of Oroville, in the County of Butte, in 1862, and the defendants objected to its admission without proof that the grantor was the same person as the grantee of the former deed. The question of the identity of the grantor of the last mentioned deed with the grantee of the previous deed, is a question of fact for the jury, and neither a question of law nor a preliminary question of fact, to be passed on by the Court, before the admission of the deed; and the party producing the deed must satisfy the jury upon this point by competent evidence, otherwise the deed will be disregarded, because it does not show a transmission of the title of the previous grantee. The general rule is that the identity of the name is prima facie evidence of the identity of the person. (2 Phil. Ev. C. H. and E. Notes, 606 ; Thompson v. Manrow, 1 Cal. 428; Mott v. Smith, 16 Cal. 554; Jackson v. Boneham, 15 Johns. 226.) The name of the city or county, usually following the name of the grantor, forms
2. The Court did not err in overruling the defendants’ motion for a nonsuit as to either or both of said defendants, for there was evidence tending to show the prior possession of the plaintiff’s grantor, and to connect both of the defendants with the alleged ouster.
3. The questions relating to a sale under execution of the interest of the City of San Francisco in the land that passed to the city, as the successor in interest of the former pueblo, were fully and satisfactorily passed upon in the case of Hart v. Burnett, 15 Cal. 530; and the conclusions announced in that case have been too frequently adopted and acted upon in subsequent cases to be now disturbed, except for the most cogent reasons.
4. The defendants insist with great zeal, and with a most abundant citation of authorities and legal principles, that the Court erred in excluding the preamble and resolutions, and an
But if the proposition of the- defendants is conceded, that the title to the premises did not and could not pass from the city by virtue of the ordinance and confirmatory Act, their position is not materially strengthened, for the title still remains in the city, and they do not in any manner—other than through the ordinance and the Act—connect themselves with it; and they, as well as the plaintiff, can rely only upon the rights growing out of the possession of the premises by themselves and those under whom they respectively claim. If the defendants were not in possession at the commencement
5. The remaining points in the case relate to the instructions given or refused by the Court, and in this respect the case is nearly identical with that of Greely v. Townsend, 25 Cal. 604, in which the rulings of the Court below were sustained. We think this case was fully and fairly presented to the jury by the Court, and that the instructions given to them declare the law applicable to the evidence in the cause with commendable clearness and precision.
Judgment affirmed.
Mr. Justice Sawyer expressed no opinion.