Case ID: yeates_4/html/0265-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Ye axes, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Lessee of Frederick Pigou against Nicholas Nevil and James Graham.
    Improvements made on lands after an early descriptive adverse warrant and a survey returned, cannot be received in evidence against a distant owner.
    Ejectment for 350 acres of land in Buffaloe township.
    The plaintiff claimed under a descriptive warrant in the name of Ludwig Karcher, dated 25th October 1774, and a survey made thereupon on the 27th April 1775, which was returned into the surveyor general’s office on the 12th March 1776.
    The defendants’ pretensions rested on a later descriptive warrant, granted to Conrad Sharpe, on the 26th October 1774, and a survey thereon made 8th November 1774, but the time of its return did not appear.
    Referred to in 15 S. & R. 222.
    The defendants shewed in evidence without opposition, that Sharpe came upon the lands in October 1775, cleared 3 or 4 roods square, felled some trees, planted a few apple seeds, and raised part of a cabin four logs high. They then offered to prove the extent of the improvements made on the lands, since October 1775, up to the time of bringing the ejectment in 1800, which was opposed.
    Messrs. Duncan and D. Smith, pro quer.
    
    Messrs. Hall and Evans, pro def.
    
   Ye axes, J.

I am constrained to overrule the testimony. Improvements made on lands in dispute, after an adverse early descriptive warrant had issued, anda survey made thereupon which has been returned into the surveyor general’s office within io£ months afterwards, can give no pretence of equity against the distant owner, and can only serve to mislead the jury.

Verdict pro quer.