Court Opinion

ID: 9671369
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:35:15.8058+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:09.570135
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, J., (dissenting). Today’s decision is demonstrably unjust. In that the Hastings Realty Company is acquiring a strip of land to which it has no title whatever. On the merits only five witnesses with engineering or surveying experience testified. All five of them fixed the disputed boundary line in accordance with the contentions of the appellee and the findings of the chancellor. Not one syllable of testimony to the contrary was offered by Hastings. That the strip actually lies within the tract described in the appellee’s deed is, on the record before us, an undisputed fact. Yet Hastings emerges as the owner of the land. This result comes about through an application of the doctrine of res judicata. Despite the majority’s protracted discussion of elementary principles of law, as far as I can see the rule of res judicata actually has nothing at all to do with this case. Two earlier’ chancery cases are involved. The first, No. 82474, cannot possibly be conclusive of the present litigation and is not found to be so by the majority. That case did not concern the point now in controversy. There the only issue was the true location of the southern boundary of Lot 1. That issue had nothing to do with the true location of the western boundary of Lot 1, now in dispute. It happened that in Case No. 82474 there was filed a surveyor’s plat, prepared with reference to the southern boundary, that erroneously located the ivestern boundary in accordance with Hastings’ present contention. But that error was wholly extraneous to the controversy then before the chancery court, did not lead to a binding decision fixing the western boundary line, and is not so interpreted by the majority in the case at bar. After the decision in the first chancery case Arkansas Eeal Estate Company conveyed its interest in Lot 2 to this appellee, Eose Courts. Thereafter the second chancery case, No. 101718, was decided. That litigation did involve the boundary now in dispute; but the point is that the appellee, Eose Courts, was not a party to the case nor was it represented by a party. The plaintiff was Arkansas Eeal Estate Company, which had already conveyed Lot 2 to Eose Courts. Yet that is the decision that the majority hold to be res judicata. Even after having studied the majority opinion I do not understand how it is that a grantee is bound by litigation brought by its grantor after the property has been conveyed to the grantee. This bewildering result seems to be reached solely because Traylor, the president.of Eose Courts, happened to testify (inadvertently, as the majority seem to realize) that the land now in controversy is the same tract as that involved in the second chancery case. Although this single statement in a record of several hundred pages is seized upon as the main support for today’s decision, as far as I can see not even this statement justifies the result that is being declared. If this scrap of Traylor’s testimony is treated as a statement of fact—an assertion of the true location of the western boundary—then it is not only clearly inadvertent but also flatly contrary to, and overcome by, the wealth of engineering testimony that establishes the location of the boundary beyond question. On the other hand, if Traylor’s statement is somehow looked upon as creating an estoppel against the corporation of which he is merely an officer, the short answer is that there can be no estoppel because there has been no reliance, no change of position, on the part of Hastings in consequence of this isolated bit of testimony. I think the majority decision to be a serious miscarriage of justice. Ward and Johnson, JJ., join in this dissent.