Newbold v. Condon

Schmucker, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from a decree of the Circuit Court of Baltimore City requiring the appellant to perform a written contract for the purchase by him from the appellee of a lot of ground lying in the recently annexed portion of the city. The contract contains an exact description of the lot and calls for its conveyance to the appellant by a good and merchantable fee simple title. The bill was filed by the appellee, Levi Z. Condon, to compel the specific performance by the appellant, David Newbold, of his contract to purchase the land.

Newbold in his answer admitted the making of the contract but averred, as an excuse for his non-performance of it that Condon could not give him a good title to the land. The record discloses the fact that Newbold asserted that Condon’s title was defective because of an alleged failure of the description contained in the deed, under which the latter claimed, to embrace all of the land described in the contract now sought to be enforced. The Court below being of opinion after hearing the case that Con-don could give a good title to the land passed the decree appealed from. The lot of land is described in the contract of sale as fol- ¹⁰² lows: All that lot or parcel of land or ground situate and 'lying in Baltimore City and State of Maryland aforesaid,being part of a lot heretofore held by the Baltimore Company which by a division of the lands of the said company under a decree of the High Court of Chancery dated the twenty-third day of April, eighteen hundred and ten accrued to Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, and is distinguished on a plat of the said division by lot number one hundred and thirty-five, and described by the metes and bounds, courses and distances following, viz: Beginning for the same at a stone the beginning of the whole lot and running and bounding on the Reisterstown turnpike road north twenty-nine degrees west forty perches and two-tenths of a perch to a stone sixteen and a half feet from the second boundary of the whole lot; thence running and bounding on a road sixteen and a-half feet wide laid out by Susannah Vineyard, and parallell with the outlines of the whole lot, south sixty degrees west twenty perches and three-fourths of a perch south eighty-nine degrees and three-fourths of a degree west nineteen perches and one-half of a perch; thence running across- the whole lot south thirty-five perches until it intersects the last line of the whole lot at the distance of fifty-seven perches south eighty degrees west from the beginning stone aforesaid, and thence to the beginning, containing ten- acres more or less.

In the deed by which the appellee acquired title to the land from Albert N. Horner it is thus described. “Beginning for the same at a stone the beginning of the whole lot and running and bounding on the Reisterstown turnpike road north twenty-nine degrees west forty and two-tenths perches to a stone sixteen feet and six inches from the second boundary; thence running and bounding on a road sixteen feet and six inches wide as laid out by Thomas Vineyard and parallel with the outlines of the whole lot, south sixty degrees west twenty and three-fourth perches, south eighty-nine and three-fourths degrees west ten and a half perches,; thence running across the whole lot south thirty-five perches until it intersects the last line of the whole lot at the dis ¹⁰³ tance of fifty-seven perches south eighty degrees from the beginning stone aforesaid and thence to the place of beginning.” We here insert a copy of a plat of the lot, recently made from an actual survey by the City Surveyor, which shows the location of the boundaries called for by the several descriptions. the third and fourth lines of the lot which the appellant agreed to purchase from Condon are misdescribed in the deed by which the latter acquired his title, in that the third line runs south eighty-nine and a quarter degrees west along the Vineyard road ten and a-half perches (to F on the plat) instead of nineteen and a-half perches (to D on the plat), and the fourth line is said run across the whole lot from the end of the third line (F on the plat instead of D which is the end of the true third line) thirty-five perches until it intersects the last line of the whole lot at the distance of fifty-seven perches ¹⁰⁴ south eighty degrees (instead of south 80° west) from the beginning. If the fourth line of the deed were run south from F on the plat it would not intersect the last line of the whole lot at or near the distance of fifty-seven perches from the beginning as it would do if it were run south thirty-five perches from the true end of the third line at D. If the fourth line were run in a southwesterly direction from F to E, which is the point on the last line of the whole lot fifty-seven perches south eighty degrees west from the- beginning, about one acre of the land described in the contract would lie outside of the boundaries of the lot. As the fourth line of the description in the Condon deed cannot be accurately located there is a manifest error in that description and the Court, under the established principles of location as declared in Kelso v. Stigar, 75 Md. 392 , and also in the recent case