Court Opinion

ID: 9830706
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:24:18.601858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:41:48.550863
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
'On account of the uncertainty in the testimony of the several surveyors respecting the length pf the lines of Martinez 6 and 9, and as emphasized in appellees’" motion for a rehearing, we find that we are in error in undertaking to definitely fix the metes and bounds of the Shattuc surveys. Therefore the opinion heretofore rendered on April 20, 1916, fixing the metes and bounds of the Shattuc surveys, is erroneous.
This being strictly a boundary suit, appellants are entitled to have the metes and bounds of the Shattuc surveys settled in this litigation. Therefore the trial court will appoint a surveyor, in accordance with instructions heretofore given, to ascertain the metes and bounds of said surveys, and for this purpose only this cause is remanded to the trial court.
[13] It is insisted that we erred in not holding that the location of the Shattuc surveys was absolutely void, for the reason that the deputy county surveyo.r, who located them, was acting for himself, and thus his acts were in violation of the law, and void.
No issue of this kind was made under the pleadings, nor urged, so far as the record discloses, in the trial court. In the trial court it was agreed by all the parties to the suit that the plaintiffs were the owners of the Shattuc surveys, and that the defendants were the owners of the Martinez surveys; that the Martinez surveys were the older surveys, and that the plaintiffs were entitled to recover to the extent that the Shattuc surveys were not in conflict with the older Martinez surveys. In accordance with this agreement, the court correctly charged the jury that there was no question of title involved in the case, and that all issues, except the one of conflict of the boundaries between said surveys, was eliminated. There was no request upon the part of the appellees to have the trial court peremptorily instruct the jury to render a verdict for them upon the ground stated, nor upon any other ground. They acquiesced in the submission of the cause to the jury upon special issues. The personal interest of the deputy surveyor, Jones, in the Shattuc surveys was developed on cross-examination, but no such advantage as is now urged was predicated on it in the trial court, nor was the agreement of counsel as to the title to the several surveys in any way modified or claimed to have been modified by them, as a result of such testimony. There is no cross-assignment of error by appellees on appeal, based upon such matter.
Under appellants’ eighth assignment of error, as found in their brief, attack is made upon the charge of the court for certain reasons therein stated, and appellees’ counsel states a counter proposition:
“That the court did not err in the charge, for the reason * * * that the court could, with propriety, have directed a verdict for the defendants on account of the Shattuc surveys having been illegally made; the testimony of the survey- or who located them having been to the effect that he located them for himself.”
This proposition is not at all germane to the assignment in appellants’ brief, and upon the agreed statement under which the case 'was tried, the title to the Shattuc surveys was entirely out of the ease, and the court could not have directed a verdict for the defendants on account of the failure of title based upon the illegal conduct of the surveyor. Appellees are in no position to urge this question on appeal. The proposition is so hypocritical that we felt justified, in passing it over without any specific mention in the original opinion.