Title: Morgan v. Larde
Citation: 212 So. 2d 594
Docket Number: N/A
State: Alabama
Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court
Date: June 20, 1968

212 So. 2d 594 (1968)
Arthur Earl MORGAN
v.
Judge LARDE et al.
2 Div. 509.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
June 20, 1968.
Rehearing Denied July 18, 1968.
Thos. F. Seale, Livingston, for appellant.
Pruitt &amp; Pruitt, Livingston, for appellees.
MERRILL, Justice.
This appeal is from a decree in a boundary line dispute which set the true line between the parties to be that of the government survey.
At one time, Sam Larde, a Negro, owned some 1,000 acres in Sumter County, including both tracts where the line is disputed. At his death, his property was divided in kind among his children. One son, Will Larde, acquired the NE¼ of NW¼, and another son, Alex Larde, acquired the N½ of NE¼, all of Sec. 10, Tp. 18 N, R. 4 West. Alex Larde sold his eighty acres to E. B. Morgan on January 9, 1939, and E. B. Morgan willed this eighty acres to his son, the appellant. The appellees are the children of Will Larde, deceased.
It was stipulated that appellant has legal title to the N½ of NE¼ and appellees have legal title to the N¼ of NW¼, all of Sec. 10, Tp. 18 N, R. 4 West; and that the only issue between the parties was whether appellant "has obtained title through adverse possession, prescription or otherwise to a tract of approximately six acres in the east part of the Northeast Quarter of Northwest Quarter of said Section 10, Township 18 North, Range 4 West, lying east of a road running generally north and south across said forty, being the old Millville-Oxford road."
*595 The trial court decided the issue in favor of appellees and we quote that part of the decree which contains the findings of the court:
The preponderance of the evidence was that the fence along the old York-Millville Road, to which appellant was claiming, had originally been erected long before the Morgans had acquired title to the NW¼ of the NE¼, and that it had been erected, not as a land line, but to keep stock out of the crops.
We have applied the rule in boundary line disputes that questions of adverse possession are questions of fact properly determined by the trier of facts; and that the determination so made, where the evidence is taken orally, as here, is favored with a presumption of correctness and will not be disturbed on appeal unless plainly erroneous or manifestly unjust. Butts v. Lancaster, 279 Ala. 589, 188 So. 2d 548. We cannot say that the findings of *596 the court were unsupported by the evidence or were either erroneous or unjust.
The boundary line between adjacent landowners may be changed by agreement or by adverse possession, but the adjacent landowners cannot relocate a section line as surveyed by the government surveyors. McNeil v. Hadden, 261 Ala. 691, 76 So. 2d 160, and cases there cited.
Here, the deeds under which all parties claimed made the boundary line the line of the government survey between the NW¼ of the NE¼ and the NE¼ of the NW¼. The appellant failed to convince the trier of fact by his evidence that there had been an agreement to change the boundary line or that he and his predecessors in title had acquired the six acres by adverse possession.
Affirmed.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and LAWSON and HARWOOD, JJ., concur.