Cramer v. Barfield
Cramer v. Barfield
Opinion of the Court
Appellants (wife and husband) were the plaintiffs in the court below. Their suit was against appellee, and as commenced by them, was to try the title to 200 acres of a tract of 422 acres of land in Morris county known as the “Lilley Survey” and also known as the “Beard Survey.” The pe-' titiofi contained only the allegations usually made by the plaintiff in a suit of trespass to try title. In the petition the land sued for was described as follows: “Beginning at the N. E. corner of the Lilley survey by virtue of the Beard headright certificate; thence south to the old road that formerly ran from Houston’s old mill by the old plantation of E. G. Rogers as explained in a deed from J. D. Lilley and H. B. Lilley to J. T. Rogers, dated February 18, 1850; thence west with said road to the west boundary line of said Beard survey; thence north with said Beard’s west line to the corner; thence east to the place of beginning, containing 200 acres of land.” Appellee’s answer was a plea of “not guilty.”
On the trial appellants offered and the court admitted as evidence: (1) A deed from W. D. Hull to appellant Mrs. S. A. Cramer, dated May 1, 1894, conveying the land de *257 scribed (and as described) in tbeir petition. (2) A bond for title, dated June 20, 1853, made by J. D. Lilley to Livingstone Skinner. The land covered by this bond is not described in the record further than as “the land as contended for by defendant Bar-field.” From a recital in the statement of facts it appears that the bond was offered in evidence by appellants “to show that J. D. Lilley was the common source of title as between plaintiffs and defendant, and that said J. D. Lilley parted with the title to the tract of land described in plaintiffs’ chain of title prior to the time he parted with the title to defendant’s tract of land.” No other evidence of title was offered by either party —an omission which is explained by a statement in the statement of facts immediately following the one quoted above, as follows: “It was here agreed by counsel for both appellant and appellee that plaintiffs owned the land north of the disputed line, and that defendant, appellee, owned the land south of same, and that the only question involved was as to the dividing line.” The trial was by the court without a jury, and resulted in a judgment that appellants take nothing by their suit, and that, quoting, “the defendant recover of and from the plaintiffs the land in controversy, and that the plaintiffs pay all costs of this suit; and it is further ordered and decreed by the court that the old road known as the old Jefferson and Mt. Pleasant road is the north boundary line between the parties to this suit.”
It appeared from appellants’ petition that they claimed the south boundary of the land they asserted title to to be a line running west from the east boundary line of the Beard survey, with “the old road that formerly ran from Houston’s old mill by the old plantation of B. G. Rogers as explained in a deed from J. D. Lilley and H. B. Lilley to T. J. Rogers, dated February 18, 1850,” to the west boundary line of said Beard survey. It did not appear either from his pleadings or from his agreement with appellants that appellee claimed that appellants’ said boundary line was not as they claimed it to be; and in neither his pleadings nor in said agreement was the land he claimed, nor its north boundary line, in any way described. Therefore it must be said that the most that appeared from the pleadings and the agreement was that there was a dispute between the parties as to the location of a line separating lands they respectively owned. What that dispute was did not appear. For anything to the contrary appearing in the pleadings or agreement, it may have been as to whether the old road referred to was the south boundary line of appellants’ land or not; or it may have been as to the location of that road on the ground. The court was not informed by either the pleadings or the agreement what the question to be determined was. An issue to try was not presented to him. “An issue,” said the Supreme Court in Freeman v. McAninch, 87 Tex. 135, 27 S. W. 98, 47 Am. St. Rep. 79, “is the question in dispute between parties to an action, and, in the courts of this state, that is required to be presented by proper pleadings.”
The judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded for a new trial.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.