Court Opinion

ID: 9632015
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 10:58:44.936661+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:06.213792
License: Public Domain

HOWE, Justice
(concurring).
I concur but write to point out that the plaintiffs contend that an express parol agreement fixing the wire fence as the boundary line was made by J. Harold Mitchell and William L. Adams, predecessors in title to the parties to this action, both at the time the fence was constructed in 1948 and again at the time the deed was delivered in 1949. The majority opinion properly holds that any agreement made in 1948 merged into the deed delivered one year later. In such a case, a deed may be reformed, if certain requirements are met, to conform to the parties’ intentions.
If an express parol agreement was made at the time of delivery of the deed, such an agreement would not be enforceable because the parties knew or reasonably should have known that the fence could not be on the true line since it did not run the full distance in a straight north-south line as called for in the deed. At the south end, it veered from tree to tree, to which the fence wires were nailed. We have held that adjoining property owners cannot orally agree upon a boundary line between them which they know is not or which obviously could not be on the true line. Tripp v. Bagley, 74 Utah 57, 276 P. 912 (1928).
For the same reason, a boundary line by acquiescence cannot be found here. The parties knew, or it was obvious, that a fence line with angles in it was not on the true north-south line. Tripp v. Bagley, supra. Additionally, the trial court found that William L. Adams and his grantees had not acquiesced in the fence line as the boundary between the properties, but had regarded the fence line simply as a livestock control.