Opinion ID: 1753810
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: did appellees or their predecessors in title gain title to the subject property by adverse possession?

Text: The lower court held that the school trustees lacked capacity to acquire and hold title, since they had no express or implied power to do so. Since the judgment of the lower court will be affirmed for other reasons, we do not find it necessary to address this sticky issue in depth. The 1867 conveyance by Sullivan to the Board of Trustees is in the form of a trust. Even if the school board was without authority to acquire the subject land in 1867, the conveyance would still have been valid as a trust, i.e., the subject land was the corpus and the School System of Monroe County was the beneficiary. The school board's inability to serve as trustee would not have affected the validity of the trust, since a court of equity will not suffer a trust to fail for want of a trustee. Taylor v. Watkins, 13 So. 811 (Miss. 1893) [not reported in State reporter]; Skinner v. Harrison Township, 116 Ind. 139, 18 N.E. 529 (1888). See also McKinnon v. Gowan, 127 Miss. 545, 90 So. 243 (1922); Russell v. Town of Hickory, 135 Miss. 184, 99 So. 897 (1924); McInnis v. Board of Education of Madison County, 242 Miss. 412, 135 So.2d 180 (1961); Board of Education of Itawamba County v. Loague, 405 So.2d 122 (Miss. 1981); In Re Estate of Hall, 193 So.2d 587 (Miss. 1967); Magee v. Magee's Estate, 236 Miss. 572, 111 So.2d 394 (1959). Therefore, it appears that the appellees are without grounds to challenge the effectiveness of the 1867 Sullivan conveyance to the Monroe County School Board. The lower court alternatively decided that assuming, arguendo, the validity of the conveyance from Sullivan to the Monroe County Board of Education, the Ryes and their predecessors in chain of title acquired a good title by adverse possession. The Mississippi Constitution of 1890 contains a provision immunizing the sovereign (state and subdivisions) against the bar of the statute of limitations, which includes the ten-year statutory period for adverse possession. Prior to 1890, there was no such provision protecting the State. Thus, in order to acquire title by adverse possession, there must have been adverse possession for a continuous period of ten years sometime between 1867 and 1890. Again, we do not attempt to determine on the record before us the acts of possession exercised by those persons in possession of the subject lands over 100 years ago and whether or not they were sufficient under the applicable principles of adverse possession law. As stated above, since the judgment will be affirmed for other reasons, we find it unnecessary to discuss this issue further.