Court Opinion

ID: 9750395
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 14:55:47.104605+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:08.654308
License: Public Domain

McDERMOTT, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent, and would affirm the Superior Court and the Chancellor below. There is no reason to change the law of this Commonwealth on the basis of a letter from Justice Holmes to William James. We have previously held with the prevailing opinion in this country that one must intend to take against the record title holder. The astounding suggestion by the majority that one’s intention cannot be read from their acts is evidentially untenable here or anywhere else.
*77The romantic notion that an interloper upon the land of another challenges the world bespeaks a time of wilderness and unrecorded land titles. In a modern organized state all titles are recorded and the “world” cannot bring an action in ejectment any more than a record title owner need periodically bring one against the “world”. Recorded land titles should lie peacefully in their owners unless one who seeks to own them intends to own them by exercising exclusive, open, notorious, and hostile possession against the record title owner and not somebody else.
NIX, C.J., joins in this opinion.