45 Mo. App. 335 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1891
— Plaintiff owns a piece of land twenty by thirty feet on the eas* side, and twenty acres on the west side of a body of water known as “Bean lake.” Between the two tracts of land, defendant cut ice and disturbed a ‘ ‘ roadway ’ ’ which plaintiff had marked out across the lake by driving stakes. Plaintiff brings trespass. The lake, though of irregular shape, is four or five miles long, and at a point between plaintiff’s two tracts is eight hundred feet wide. It has never been navigated, and, as far as we can gather from this imperfect record, cannot be for the purpose of trade or commerce. The trial court sustained a demurrer to the evidence, and plaintiff appeals.
An examination into the legal rights of riparian proprietors, as regards different streams or bodies of
The greater part of the litigation over kindred questions to the one here considered has taken place in the older states which have not the system of surveys and boundaries by section, half and quarter section lines since instituted by the general government. Most of the land titles, in this and other states, have their inception from the government, and, when a patent from the government conveys, a quarter section which includes a portion of a lake which has been surveyed and platted as though dry land, the patentee will be confined to the lines of his quarter, whether it falls short of, or goes beyond, the center.
The judgment, with the concurrence of the other judges, is reversed, and the cause remanded.