Los Angeles Cemetery Ass'n v. City of Los Angeles

BELCHES, C. C.—- This is an action to quiet the plaintiff’s title to a strip of land, forty feet wide and twelve hundred and thirty-six feet long, in the city of Los Angeles. The court below gave judgment for the defendant, from which, and from an order refusing a new trial, the plaintiff appeals. The facts found by the court are in substance as follows: On October 26, 1887, the plaintiff, a corporation, was the owner of a tract of land in the city of Los Angeles, which included the land in controversy, and on that day it filed for record a map of the tract, on which were delineated the usual plats and avenues of cemetery grounds, and along the southerly and westerly sides of which were left blank colored strips, forty feet in width, the one on the southerly side being now a portion of First street, and the one on the westerly side being the land in controversy. The map also showed that the only entrance to the cemetery was from the strip in controversy, and that the strip opened out at one end into First street, and at the other end into Broderick avenue, public streets of the city. About the time of the filing of this map, plaintiff planted along the easterly and inner line of the street in controversy a hedge fence, leaving an opening therein where the entrance to the cemetery was located, and also planted pepper trees for a short distance on each side of such entrance, which hedge fence is still intact, and is now, and [785]has been since the year 1885, a good and substantial fence. In 1885 plaintiff moved a fence which had been erected upon the outer or westerly line of the strip into the inner line thereof, and adjoining the hedge fence on the easterly side thereof. Sometime about the year 1885, the lands adjoining the strip in controversy on the west side were laid out in lots, and spaces between them for streets, and among other spaces was one twenty feet in width, the full length of and adjoining the said strip, and making therewith a sixty-foot strip, known as “Evergreen Avenue.’’ Previous to and since 1885, plaintiff has sold to divers persons a great number of lots in its cemetery, and the only carriage entrance thereto fronts on the strip of land in dispute, about midway between the north and south ends thereof. Since the year 1885, the said strip of land has been continuously used and traveled by the public as a public street, which use has been with the knowledge and consent of plaintiffs. On December 15, 1890, the city council of the city of Los Angeles duly passed an ordinance accepting all streets theretofore dedicated, or offered to be dedicated, by property owners for public use. And, as conclusions of law, the court found that the said strip of land was a part and portion of a public street in the city of Los Angeles, known as “Evergreen Avenue”; that the plaintiff had no right to its possession; and that the defendant was entitled to its possession as a public street. Judgment was entered in accordance with these conclusions.