McKenzie v. Nichelini

RICHARDS, J.

The plaintiff, being the owner of the south half of the northwest quarter and the north half of the southwest quarter of section 24, township 8 north, range 4 west, Mount Diablo base and meridian, brought an action in ejectment against the defendants, who claimed ownership of the south half of the last named quarter-section but who had entered into possession of land by virtue of such claim which, according to the plaintiff, constituted part of the north half of said southwest quarter.

The court, after a lengthy trial, in which much evidence was taken of surveyors and others as to monuments, witness trees, courses, distances and topography, found in favor of

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the plaintiff, and gave judgment accordingly. The defendants appeal, their main contention being that the finding of the court as^co the location of the plaintiff’s land upon which its judgment is based is wholly unsupported by the evidence and is contrary thereto.

The deciding factor in the case, as admitted by the appellants, is the location of the line dividing the north and south halves of the southwest quarter of section 24 above referred to. According to the contention of the appellants, the true method for locating this line is first to find the legal center of the section—a point, as they remark, which is not set by the government surveyor, but which is found by running a straight line from the quarter-section corner on the north boundary of the section to the quarter-section corner on the south line thereof, and then by intersecting this line by one drawn from the quarter-section comer on the west side of the section to the opposite quarter-section corner on the east, the point of intersection of these two lines being the legal center of the section. Having thus obtained the interior boundaries of the four quarters of the section the north and south halves of the southwest quarter will be found by similarly intersecting that quarter-section by an east and west line equidistant from its north and south boundaries, to do which it is, of course, necessary to know in addition to the points already obtained the quarter comer on the south boundary of the section (identical with the southeast corner of the southwest quarter) and the southwest comer of the section (identical with the same corner of the quarter-section). It is the appellants’ contention that the evidence offered by the plaintiff shows that the lines were not run in this manner, from which they argue that the court’s finding as to the location of the line in dispute is not supported by the evidence.