Birk v. Hodgkins

SLOSS, J.

Action to quiet title to lots 1 and 2 of block V of the Mott tract in the city of Los Angeles. Lot 1 lies at the corner of First and Flower streets, and lot 2 adjoins it to the north. Each of the lots, as claimed by plaintiffs, has a frontage of sixty feet on Flower Street and a depth of one hundred and sixty-five feet. The court found that the plaintiffs Susie E. Birk and Rebecca Lee Dorsey, Jr., are the owners of all of lot 1 and the south 52.72 feet, front and rear, of lot 2, and that the defendant Elizabeth A. Hodgkins is the owner of “the south 45.7 feet of the north 376.19 feet of the east 165 feet of block V,” the property so described including the north 7.28 feet of lot 2 as claimed by plaintiffs. Judgment was entered following these findings. The plaintiffs appeal from the judgment and from an order denying their motion for a new trial.

[577]

The facts are undisputed, and the only question is whether the court below was justified in finding that the defendant Elizabeth A. Hodgkins, rather than the plaintiffs, was the owner of the strip of 7.28 feet on the northerly side of lot 2. On December 26, 1878, Prudent Beaudry, who was then the owner of the Mott Tract, conveyed to Victor Beaudry lots 1 to 16 inclusive in block V of said tract, according to a map of the tract recorded in the recorder’s office of Los Angeles County. The map designated block V as a parallelogram 480 feet in length by 330 feet in width, bounded on the north by Court House Street, on the west by Grasshopper Street, on the south by First Street, and on the east by Flower Street. The block is, according to the map, divided into sixteen blocks. Eight of these, numbered from 1 to 8, have a frontage of sixty feet each on Flower Street, and run back 165 feet, or half the distance to Grasshopper Street. Lots 9 to 16 have a like frontage on Grasshopper Street and a depth of 165 feet to the rear lines of lots 1 to 8. All of the streets running east and west are shown on the map to have a width of sixty feet, with the exception of First Street which is sixty-eight feet wide. It was stipulated at the trial that the frontage of block V on Flower Street, by actual measurement, is 488.91 feet, instead of 480 feet as shown by the map.

On March 8, 1886, Victor Beaudry, who by virtue of the deed from Prudent Beaudry had become the owner of the entire block, made a conveyance to M. E. Hodgkins and E. T. Wright of the following property: “That certain piece and parcel of land situated in the city and county of Los Angeles, state of California and more particularly described as follows: Commencing at a point at the intersection of Court House Street and Flower Street, said point being the northeast corner of block ‘V’ of Mott Tract of said county, and running thence along the southerly line of Court House Street north 52 50' west 253.84 feet to the intersection of Court House Street and Pearl Street; thence along the easterly side of Pearl Street 57 12' west 217.28 feet to an angle in the easterly line of Pearl Street; thence along said easterly line of Pearl Street south 37 27' west 292.02 feet to a point at the intersection of Pearl Street and First Street; thence along the northerly line of First Street south 52 47' east 163.28 feet to a point in the northerly line of First Street; thence north 37 21' east