Court Opinion

ID: 9656454
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 19:48:26.989064+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:32.429361
License: Public Domain

Ethridge, J.,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I concur in most of the points decided in the controlling opinion previously rendered. 253 Miss. 602, 176 So. 2d 307 (1965). This dissent concerns only the relatively small tracts on the east side of Second Creek which have been adversely possessed by appellants for many years, as everyone agrees the record shows.
The chancery court was justified in finding that there was accretion to appellees’ land, and the right to such accretions vested in them. Nor can appellants claim the benefit of the doctrine of color of title, since the location of Second Creek in 1885 was not established, and therefore the partition decree, which appellants assert constituted color of title, was inadequate for that purpose.
However, the evidence establishes, as the controlling opinion recognizes, that appellants and their predecessors in title have used and adversely possessed between six and twenty-seven acres across the creek for many years, by cultivating it, gathering firewood, and selling timber. Although the bill of complaint did not request expressly an adjudication of ownership of the land actually, adversely possessed, the chancery court had the power and the duty, under general allegations of the bill, to so find and decide. It should have done so, and in my view, the suggestion of error should be overruled in part and sustained in part, and the cause remanded for a limited purpose: To determine the boundaries of the land of which appellants have been in actual adverse possession for more than the statutory ten years.
This result would be in accord with the plain facts and would effectuate an equitable decision. It would be consistent with the duty of the chancery and this Court to “remand the case to the files,” or to remand it to *636the trial court for determination of appropriate facts necessary to an equitable decision. See Williams v. Edwards, 246 Miss. 92, 149 So. 2d 326 (1963); Griffith, Miss. Chancery Practice § 595 (2d ed. 1950). This is the aim of judicial administration. The non-existence of direct precedents on this point should not prevent the use of a reasonable method of effectuating justice. On the contrary, it indicates the need for such an appropriate procedure.
Appellants have shown actual, continuous, adverse possession of a small portion of the entire tract in litigation. It should be the duty of the chancery court, after hearing appropriate evidence, to identify that tract and to recognize appellants’ title to it.