Court Opinion

ID: 9675853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:07:29.903956+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:40.476209
License: Public Domain

PARRISH, Judge,
concurring.
I concur. I do so by separate opinion due to an uncertainty as to the basis for this dispute. I am uncertain about the reason plaintiffs described the land that was conveyed to them in 1972 by William Fred Letterman and Mildred Wilma Letterman, viz., “[a]ll that part of the E ½ of the NE ¼ NE ¼ of Sec. 25 ...,” as part of the tract to which they sought to quiet title. Plaintiffs indisputably own the land they acquired from the Lettermans. If they claim that the westerly boundary of that tract was the “old North-South fence,” quiet title may not be the appropriate remedy. Under those circumstances, the dispute would simply be one over the location of a boundary line between plaintiffs’ property on the east and property owned by the various defendants on the west.
In Carroz v. Kaminiski, 467 S.W.2d 871, 872 (Mo. banc 1971), the court explained that when the issue in a case “is the location on the ground of the boundary between the two tracts,” the dispute is not a title controversy that may be resolved by an action to quiet title. Rather, “ejectment is the appropriate remedy for the determination of a boundary line.” See also Moss *537v. Moss, 706 S.W.2d 884, 887-88 (Mo.App. 1986); and Probst v. Probst, 595 S.W.2d 289, 290-91 (Mo.App.1979). If this dispute is simply a boundary line dispute it would be appropriate, on remand, for plaintiffs to seek to amend their pleadings so as to state a cause of action in ejectment. Moss, supra, at 888.
On the other hand, if plaintiffs claim that they otherwise acquired title to a strip of land between the westerly boundary of the land conveyed to them by the Lettermans and the “old North-South fence,” plaintiffs might consider amending their quiet title count to describe only the strip of land to which title is in dispute.