Title: Board of Education v. Thompson
Citation: 185 Kan. 620, 347 P.2d 369
Docket Number: 41,479
State: Kansas
Issuer: Kansas Supreme Court
Date: December 12, 1959

185 Kan. 620 (1959)
347 P.2d 369
THE BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE CITY OF HERINGTON OF THE STATE OF KANSAS, Appellee,
v.
BERT L. THOMPSON, JR., FRANCES K. THOMPSON, HELEN THOMPSON SANDERSON, et al., Appellants.
No. 41,479

Supreme Court of Kansas.
Opinion filed December 12, 1959.
Charles W. Bradshaw, of Abilene, argued the cause and Horace A. Santry, of Salina, was with him on the briefs for the appellants.
Howard W. Harper, of Junction City, argued the cause, and Lee Hornbaker, William D. Clement and Richard F. Waters, all of Junction City, were with him on the briefs for the appellee.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
JACKSON, J.:
The Board of Education filed suit in the district court to quiet title to real estate against the appellants as defendants. After filing a motion to strike and a motion to make the petition *621 more definite and the overruling of said motions by the trial court, defendants filed a demurrer to plaintiff's petition upon the grounds: 1. That several causes of action were improperly joined in said petition. 2. That the petition did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action.
The trial court overruled the demurrer and gave defendants time to answer. Instead, defendants appealed the order of the court overruling the demurrer to this court. It may be said that defendants do not argue in their brief the above motions or that there is any merit in the first ground specified in the above demurrer. The sole question now before the court is whether the petition stated a cause of action.
The Board of Education in its petition alleged that it was the owner of the described real estate in Dickinson county in fee simple and was in possession thereof; that it had been in open and adverse possession of the real estate for more than fifteen years under and by virtue of a deed dated December 11, 1905, from Bert L. Thompson and Edith M. Thompson, then husband and wife.
A copy of the deed was attached to the petition as an exhibit, and it is shown that the granting clause thereof reads in part as follows:
The petition of the Board of Education contains the following concluding paragraph preceding the prayer:
Among the opening paragraphs of the brief of the appellants in this court, we find the following:
The very evident trouble with the above statement at the very outset is that these facts do not appear on the face of the petition. While these demurring defendants are named in the petition, neither *622 their identity nor any right or claim of title belonging to them is disclosed in the petition. Instead, the petition in effect asks that defendants answer and set up any claim of title which they may have to the real estate in question.
One of the oldest and best settled rules of pleading is that a demurrer will reach only facts which appear in the pleading demurred to. If certain facts are necessary for the court to consider in passing upon a question of law and are not contained in the petition, a defendant must answer and allege the pertinent and necessary facts. This rule was better understood perhaps, or at least was fraught with more danger to the party demurring before the enactment of the provisions of the civil code allowing defendant to plead over after the overruling of a demurrer to the petition. Yet, even in modern practice, ill-advised demurrers waste time of the parties and the courts, and increase the cost of litigation.
One of the first cases in which this court discussed the rule that a demurrer reached only the facts appearing on the face of the petition appears to have been Mayberry v. Kelley, 1 Kan. 116. The same principle has been reiterated many times since the Mayberry case. A few of the later cases may be mentioned: Winfield Town Co. v. Maris, 11 Kan. 128; Northrup v. Willis, 65 Kan. 769, 70 Pac. 879; Manufacturing Co. v. Keckley, 77 Kan. 797, 90 Pac. 781; Riverside v. Bailey, 82 Kan. 429, 108 Pac. 796; Runnels v. Montgomery Ward &amp; Co., 165 Kan. 571, 195 P.2d 571; Lee v. Beuttel, 170 Kan. 54, 223 P.2d 692; Kendall v. Elliot, 177 Kan. 630, 281 P.2d 1088; Anderson Cattle Co. v. Kansas Turnpike Authority, 180 Kan. 749, 308 P.2d 172; Kleppe v. Prawl, 181 Kan. 590, 313 P.2d 227; Snedeger v. Schrader, 183 Kan. 725, 332 P.2d 586.
From the outline of the petition in this case it would seem almost too obvious for argument that a cause of action to quiet title as to plaintiff's interest in the real property is stated (Cessna v. Carroll, 178 Kan. 650, 654, 290 P.2d 803; Seaton v. Escher, 86 Kan. 679, 121 Pac. 907). While the question is not really here, we might point out in passing that even if defendants were able to raise the question of plaintiff's title under the granting clause of the deed, as set out supra, a demurrer would be the wrong method of raising the question. Defendants claim only that the language of the deed places some sort of a limitation upon plaintiff's title. It is conceded that plaintiff is entitled to have its title quieted to the property as long as it is used for school purposes. In Coolbaugh, Trustee, v. Gage, 182 Kan. 145, 319 P.2d 146 the opinion reads in part:
A demurrer is an efficient pleading tool, where a petition is fatally defective in stating any cause of action or where all the facts are stated in the petition, and the question of whether a cause of action is alleged depends upon a dispute of law. The case at bar is not within the above category, and it is evident that the trial court did not err in overruling the demurrer to the petition herein. The order of the district court should be affirmed.
It is so ordered.