Long Beach Land & Water Co. v. Richardson

McKee, J. This was an action of forcible entry and detainer against the parties defendants, who were charged [207]with having forcibly entered upon about twenty feet square of the seashore of which, it was alleged, the plaintiff was in the exclusive possession at the time of the entry. The entry was made on the twenty-seventh day of July, 1885.

At the trial of the issues made by the pleadings in the case, the court granted a nonsuit, upon the ground that the evidence was insufficient to prove actual and peaceable possession by the plaintiff of the locus in quo at the time of the defendants’ entry thereon. Whether the court erred in nonsuiting the plaintiff on that ground is therefore the only question presented on the appeal.

From the case as presented by the plaintiff, it appears that the land upon which the defendants entered is part of the seashore in front of a ranch in Los Angeles County known as the Cerritos ranch, which extends from the San Gabriel River on the west, along the beach of the Pacific Ocean for about two miles, to the boundary line of the Alamitos ranch. The plaintiff was in possession of that portion of the ranch lying immediately in front of the ocean, using the land as a “ seaside resort,” which, in the exercise of corporate powers derived from its articles of incorporation, it had established there two or three years before the entry complained of, and was known by the name of “Long Beach.”

In establishing this seaside resort, the company had the portion of the ranch which fronted the ocean surveyed and laid off in streets and blocks for residence purposes and public parks, and a map of the survey made, on which the streets were marked and named, and the blocks for residence purposes subdivided into lots were delineated and numbered. As designated on. the map, the streets laid off in the direction of the ocean were not projected to the beach; they ended in a street which was laid off parallel with the beach on the upland above the line of high tide, named on the map “ Ocean [208]Park Avenue.” South of the avenue the beach extends irregularly. In the narrowest place it is about three hundred feet to the line of low-water mark; but it gradually widens out until it is about eight hundred feet,— more than a hundred feet of which from low-tide to high-tide lines is covered by the ordinary tides.