Court Opinion

ID: 9652296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 17:22:03.393898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:50.176745
License: Public Domain

DUFFY, Justice
(dissenting):
I admit to being troubled by the Court’s disposition of this appeal and I therefore dissent from the ruling announced in the majority opinion.
The case involves a dispute between adjoining landowners who are litigating about where their common boundary is located. And that boundary is located by reference to a 1941 deed to certain of plaintiffs’ predecessors in title. In part, the deed reads this way:
“. . . Beginning at the Southwesterly intersection of . . V two roads [Route 14 and the road to Selbyville] and running Southerly with the Westerly boundary line of the first mentioned road [Route 14] [to the Maryland line].”
The Superior Court heard testimony from three surveyors and decided the case by adopting the Carter survey, offered by plaintiffs, as showing the correct boundary based on the 1941 deed.
Obviously, where the “Westerly boundary line” of Route 14 was in 1941 is of critical importance. This Court was informed during oral argument that counsel and the Trial Court — i. e., all parties and the Judge who tried the case — all assumed that the Route 14 right of way in 1941 was 100 feet wide. Now we know from what appear to be undisputed facts placed before us, that the right of way was only 40 feet wide.1 *556Indeed, the majority opinion takes judicial notice of that fact based on 1931 proceedings in the Superior Court.
Given this state of affairs, it seems to me that justice requires a remand so that the Superior Court may consider the significance of what we now know about the width of the Route 14 right of way, but which the Superior Court did not know when it decided the case. The evidence, in my judgment, meets all of the tests approved by the Court in State v. Watson, Del.Supr., 5 Storey 285, 186 A.2d 543 (1961).
The majority opinion considers the probable effect of the new evidence on the original result (which, I agree, is a “most important requirement”), but its analysis is rooted in a self-contradiction: thus the Court finds that the parties intended to “[act] . without regard to the width of the right of way as shown by the record” but, at the same time, the Court determines that the 1941 deed runs “with the Westerly boundary line of the . . road [Route 14].”
In my view, plaintiffs should not be given it both ways: either the deed on which they rely means what it says about running “with” the boundary of Route 14, or the parties to the deed intended something else. But the ruling by this Court permits plaintiffs to impeach the deed on which they rely and, at the same time, get the benefit of it.
I would grant the motion to remand so that the Superior Court may consider the offered documents and its own 1931 proceedings establishing a 40-foot wide right of way.2 There must, of course, be an end to litigation but that is a rule designed to do justice, not to perpetuate a mistake.

. The Trial Judge stated in his opinion that each of the three surveyors who testified,
“. . . concluded, in effect, that the 1941 deed, which used the inarticulate phrase *556‘along the westerly boundary line of Route # 14,’ could and should be read as if it used the phrase ‘along the westerly right-of-way line of Route # 14’.” (Emphasis added.)
Defendant’s surveyor later changed his mind but the two offered by plaintiffs, including Mr. Carter, did not.

. I should also add that the complexity of the briefing submitted after oral argument indicates that the questions argued, particularly as to the intentions of the parties in 1941, are more appropriate for consideration in the first instance by the Trial Court rather than an Appeals Court.