McCoy v. Johnson

Robinson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This hill it seems to us, is rather a novel proceeding. The plaintiff’s father was the owner of a leasehold interest in a lot of ground fronting seventeen feet seven inches on Eden street; and in 1837, he built thereon a brick dwelling-house which covered the entire front of his lot, and extended upon and covered two feet five and a half inches of the front of an adjoining lot, belonging to the defendants. There were no landmarks or boundary stones, or other insignia indicating the division line between the two lots; hut the paper titles of both the plaintiff and defendants called for the corner of Eayette and Eden streets, and the true location of said lots was at all times susceptible of ascertainment by actual measurement and survey from said corner.

The plaintiff’s father it is admitted, took possession of the dwelling house in 1837, and occupied it continually till his death in 1873, from which time it has been in the exclusive possession of the plaintiff. It is further admitted that neither the plaintiff nor the defendants, nor the parties under whom they claim, had any knowledge of the fact that the dwelling house covered any part of the defendants’ lot, till within a few months before this hill was filed. Upon these facts the plaintiff asks a Court of equity to decree that the defendants have no title to the tiuo ⁴⁹² feet five and a half inches of land covered by the plaintiff’ s house, the paper title to which is admitted to he in the defendants. In other words, it is a hill in equity hy the plaintiff, to obtain title to a strip of land-claimed to have been acquired hy adversary possession, as against the defendants holding the paper title.

The hare statement of the plaintiff’s case is in itself sufficient to show that a Court of equity has no jurisdiction in the premises. To justify its interference on the ground, that the defendants’ claim of title is a cloud upon the plaintiff’s title, the latter must show he has title to the property. ..“Those only,” say the Supreme Court, “who have a clear, legal, .and equitable title to land