Case Title: Walls v. Grohman

Citation: 315 N.C. 239, 337 S.E.2d 556

Docket Number: 96PA85

State: north-carolina

Court: North Carolina Supreme Court

Date: 1985-12-10T00:00:00Z

Document:
337 S.E.2d 556 (1985)
315 N.C. 239
Walter C. WALLS and wife, Susan B. Walls
v.
H.G. GROHMAN and wife, Catherine H. Grohman.
No. 96PA85.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.
December 10, 1985.
*557 Carr, Swails & Huffine by James B. Swails, Wilmington, for plaintiffs-appellees.
Addison Hewlett, Jr. and John F. Crossley, Wilmington, for defendants-appellants.
BILLINGS, Justice.
Plaintiffs instituted this action to remove a cloud on the title to their property, the cloud being the defendants' claim to a fifty plus-foot-wide strip along the northern side of the property. The defendants claim the disputed strip by adverse possession.
The matter was submitted to a referee, but the first referee's report was set aside for failure of the referee to conduct a hearing. In a second report, after a hearing, the referee found that the plaintiffs had record title to the strip in question but that the defendants had acquired title by adverse possession for not less than twenty years. The plaintiffs filed exceptions to the referee's report. Following a hearing on the exceptions, Judge Tucker concluded that the report and order did not correctly apply the law of North Carolina. He therefore entered judgment for the plaintiffs, and the defendants appealed to the Court of Appeals, which affirmed the judgment.
All parties' claims of title derive from Mrs. Kittie Horne Lewis and husband, Henry G. Lewis. The defendants have claimed title since 28 October 1948 when Kittie Horne Lewis and Henry G. Lewis deeded to defendant Catherine H. Grohman a tract of land adjoining the disputed strip. Catherine Grohman thought the tract included the disputed strip.
As found by the referee, the plaintiffs' chain of title is a series of deeds as follows:
The referee's finding number I 9 contains the following:
According to the referee's findings, the common source, Mrs. Kittie Horne Lewis and her husband, divided certain property known as Tract # 5 of the Horne Division among five children, two of whom were defendant Catherine H. Grohman and Bruce Lewis, plaintiffs' predecessor in title. Tract # 5 measured 1,083 feet on its eastern side, which bordered on the right-of-way of "New Federal Point Road," presently State Road 1492 and called Myrtle Grove Loop Road. The conveyances, which were intended to convey the entire Tract # 5, were, in chronological order, as follows:
Note that the road frontage of the lots actually conveyed totals 1,031 feet, or 52 feet less than the total of Tract # 5.
The beginning point of defendant Catherine Grohman's deed is 256 feet along the road south of the northeast corner of the tract, the point which corresponds to the southeast corner of the tract earlier conveyed to Alma L. Rouse. The Grohman deed then calls for a distance along the *558 road of 242 feet. The Grohmans claim that their tract actually extends to a point 293-plus feet along the road from the beginning point, and that the deed conveys almost 52 feet less than they claim and than was intended.
The deed to Bruce Lewis calls for a beginning point at the Grohman southeast corner and runs along the road to the northeast corner of the property previously conveyed to Phoenix T. Dicksey. The deed to Lewis states that distance as 212 feet; however, the distance between the actually conveyed Grohman tract and the Phoenix T. Dicksey tract is 266 feet, or 54 feet more than the deed to Lewis indicates. Thus, if the call had begun at the southeast corner of Bruce Lewis' tract, corresponding to the northeast corner of the Phoenix T. Dicksey tract, and run 212 feet north along the road, the resulting point would not be the southeast corner of the property described in the deed to the defendant Catherine H. Grohman, but would be slightly south of the southeast corner as claimed by the defendants.
The defendants contend that Catherine Grohman's parents intended to convey to her a tract of land which included the disputed strip. The referee's findings include the following:
Other findings of the referee further supported his conclusions that:
The referee then ordered that the disputed land, north of a line described in the order as the division line between the lands of the plaintiffs and the defendants, was the plaintiffs' land.
The District Court Judge found that the referee had incorrectly applied North Carolina law relating to adverse possession and ordered title to the disputed land quieted in plaintiff. The trial judge's order contains, inter alia, the following:
The Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court's application of the law of adverse possession, citing Sipe v. Blankenship, 37 N.C.App. 499, 246 S.E.2d 527 (1978), cert. denied, 296 N.C. 411, 251 S.E.2d 470 (1979); Price v. Whisnant, 236 N.C. 381, 72 S.E.2d 851 (1952) and Garris v. Butler, 15 N.C.App. 268, 189 S.E.2d 809 (1972). We allowed the defendants' petition for discretionary review of the decision of the Court of Appeals which held:
72 N.C.App. at 449, 324 S.E.2d  at 877-78.
We reverse.
There is no question that for years the law in North Carolina has been understood as described in the following quotation from Hetrick, Webster's Real Estate Law In North Carolina § 293, (rev.ed.1981):
Id. at 320.
The quotation from Hetrick is supported by citations beginning with Gibson v. Dudley, 233 N.C. 255, 63 S.E.2d 630 (1951). However, prior to that case, the North Carolina law clearly had been contra.
In the 1922 case of Dawson v. Abbott, 184 N.C. 192, 114 S.E. 15, this Court awarded a new trial to the plaintiff because the trial judge instructed the jury: "If a man is mistaken as to where his line is, and gets over the line through mistake, and holds it thinking it is his own when in truth it is not, but without intending to claim beyond the true line, that would not be adverse possession." Id. at 194-95, 114 S.E.  at 16. The Court said that even if that instruction was a correct statement of the law, it was error for the trial court to give it in view of the evidence in the case. The Court then summarized the plaintiff's testimony as follows:
Id. at 195, 114 S.E.  at 16. The following passage from 1 Cyc. pp. 1036-1038 was then quoted and applied as the law of this state:
Id. at 196, 114 S.E.  at 16.
The general rule throughout the United States regarding possession under mistake or ignorance is as stated in the following quotation from 3 Am.Jur.2d Adverse Possession § 41 (1962):
See also 80 A.L.R.2d 1161, § 3 (1961).
The case of Gibson v. Dudley, 233 N.C. 255, 63 S.E.2d 630 (1951) seems to have intended to apply the above-quoted rule, for there the Court said that the plaintiff's evidence was insufficient to support adverse possession because "he was not claiming it as against the true owner when he first discovered the error and went to see the defendant and then his own lawyer about fixing up papers to make it a joint driveway. Prior to this time, `he did not intend to usurp a possession beyond the boundaries to which he had a good title.' Bynum v. Carter, 26 N.C. 310." Id. at 257, 63 S.E.2d  at 631. However, the Court went on to say: "His claim then was not one of adverse possession but one of rightful *561 ownership. If his possession were exclusive, open and notorious, as he now contends, no one regarded it as hostile or adverse, not even the plaintiff himself, for he was not conscious of using his neighbor's land. `I thought all the time it was mine.'" Id. at 258, 63 S.E.2d  at 631.
The next year in Battle v. Battle, 235 N.C. 499, 70 S.E.2d 492 (1952) plaintiffs James H. Boddie and Julia Boddie Galloway's claim of title to certain property was dependent upon the adverse possession of their parents, Arcenia and Julius Boddie. The plaintiffs' contention and evidence was that when Arcenia Boddie's mother conveyed certain property to Arcenia and Julius Boddie, the disputed property, lot 817, was inadvertently omitted from the deed. In affirming judgment for the plaintiffs this Court said:
Id. at 501, 70 S.E.2d  at 494.
However, a few months later in Price v. Whisnant, 236 N.C. 381, 72 S.E.2d 851 (1952) this Court relied upon Gibson in concluding that adverse possession was not established. The Court in Price for the first time announced and applied the rule that has been followed since that time:
Id. at 385, 72 S.E.2d  at 854.
The Court of Appeals has relied upon and repeated the rule stated in Gibson as amplified in Price in the later cases of Garris v. Butler, 15 N.C.App. 268, 189 S.E.2d 809 (1972), Sipe v. Blankenship, 37 N.C.App. 499, 246 S.E.2d 527 (1978), cert. denied, 296 N.C. 411, 251 S.E.2d 470 (1979) and the instant case. The rule was stated in Garris as follows:
15 N.C.App. at 270-71, 189 S.E.2d  at 810-11.
The rule as applied in the more recent North Carolina cases has been criticized as rewarding only the claimant who is a thief.[1]
*562 We have concluded that a rule which requires the adverse possessor to be a thief in order for his possession of the property to be "adverse" is not reasonable, and we now join the overwhelming majority of states, return to the law as it existed prior to Price and Gibson, and hold that when a landowner, acting under a mistake as to the true boundary between his property and that of another, takes possession of the land believing it to be his own and claims title thereto, his possession and claim of title is adverse. If such adverse possession meets all other requirements and continues for the requisite statutory period, the claimant acquires title by adverse possession even though the claim of title is founded on a mistake. We therefore overrule Price v. Whisnant, 236 N.C. 381, 72 S.E.2d 851 (1952); Gibson v. Dudley, 233 N.C. 255, 63 S.E.2d 630 (1951); Sipe v. Blankenship, 37 N.C.App. 499, 246 S.E.2d 527 (1978), cert. denied, 296 N.C. 411, 251 S.E.2d 470 (1979); and Garris v. Butler, 15 N.C.App. 268, 189 S.E.2d 809 (1972) to the extent that they apply a different rule.
Applying this rule to the facts before us, it is clear that the referee's findings support a conclusion that the defendants have acquired title to the disputed tract by adverse possession for more than twenty years.
Therefore, we reverse the Court of Appeals and remand this case to the Court of Appeals for further remand to the District Court of New Hanover County for entry of judgment in accordance with the referee's report.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
[1]  This view "not only confers a premium upon conscious wrongdoing, but introduces into the law of adverse possession a requirement never otherwise asserted. Under such a rule there could be no adverse possession unless the possessor had the intention of claiming the land if his title is defective. Ordinarily a person who believes that he owns certain land, or land up to a certain boundary, has no thought as to what he will do if he is mistaken. Even assuming that he has an intention, such intention is necessarily difficult, and frequently impossible, of determination. If his own testimony concerning his motive is accepted a premium is placed on perjury." Tiffany on Real Property, § 551 (abr. 3rd ed. 1970).