Court Opinion

ID: 9810821
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:00:44.726915+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:15.411812
License: Public Domain

Furches, J.,
dissenting: In my opinion there is nothing in the fact that the contract stated that the number of acres were to be determined by an “accurate survey.” .This, to my mind, means no more than if it had said the number of acres should be determined by a survey of the lands. In either case an accurate survey would be meant. Were this not so, we would have to say that the contract for a survey, without adding the *811word “ accurate,” meant an inaccurate survey. This, to my mind, cannot be so.
I think the whole question depends upon what mode of making the survey should be adopted, whether the horizontal or surface measurement. Both modes are taught in works on surveying, and it is claimed by the defendant that both modes are in practice in North Carolina. The plaintiff offered to prove that the surface measurement was the mode used in Western North Carolina. This evidence was objected to and excluded. It seems to me that it should have been allowed. So far as my knowledge goes, I have never known a survey to be made of lands except by the surface measure; and in my opinion this is the general rule in this State, and if in any cases the horizontal mode has been used, they have been exceptions to the general rule. I do not mean by surface measure that you should go to the bottoms of deep ravines or climb perpendicular cliffs, but that you should follow the undulations of the surface.
It is said there is no evidence that surface measure was .the mode adopted by the State in granting this land a century ago, and there is no reason to presume that surface measure was the mode adopted then. I do not agree to this proposition, as I cannot imagine a surveyor out in the wild mountains of Western North Carolina, a hundred years ago, where there were more free lands than anything else, except free Indians and wild animals, plodding along with a Gunter’s chain and level, making a survey of a 25,000 or 150,000 acre grant of land.
For such reasons as these, I cannot agree to the judgment of the Court.