90 Ky. 426 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1890
delivered the opinion of the court.
The appellants, as the devisees of John I. Jacob, brought this action of ejectment against the appellees to recover the possession of ten feet of ground, the southern half of an alley, fronting on Second street, in the city of Louisville.
John I. Jacob, the ancestor of the appellants, directed in his will that all his estate be divided among his children. The commissioners who were appointed to divide his estate, in a suit instituted for that pur
As alleys are dedicated as essential ways to the back entrance to lots, the same reason exists, when the lots .are sold with a clear reference to them as boundaries, for holding that the center thereof is the dividing line. In such case the intention of the parties is to be drawn from the deed. As seen, the street or alley is to be regarded as a single line, and the conveyance is to be treated as’ being to the center thereof, the same as if a tree or rock had been called for. In other words, the center of the street or alley is one of the lines called for in the deed, and as long as the deed stands unattacked
Mrs. Tyler and her vendees, including Meade, acquired, by their respective deeds, the title to the center of the alley, and the appellants, at the time they attempted to convey to Meade, had no title to convey to him. He was then the owner of the ten-foot strip, and acquired nothing by the conveyance of it by the appellants; and that fact being realized by the parties, as the court below found, and as we think upon sufficient evidence, they rescinded the contract by reconveyances, which had the effect to reconvey to each party the title that he had theretofore conveyed, and as no title was conveyed by the appellants to Meade, as far as the ten feet were concerned, he certainly, by this contract of rescission, conveyed no-title back to them. Such was not the intention. The only object was, by the reconveyances, to put them