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115 Mass. 577

Garvin v. Dean

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 16, 1874

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1874-09-16

Writ oe entry. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Aldrich, J., the jury found for the demandants, and the tenant excepted to the refusal of the presiding judge to rule as requested by him. The facts appear in the opinion.

Cited in Abbott (1879)’s definition of “Northerly”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1874-09-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently April 1902

4 state decisions

101874188018901900decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Gray, C. J.

¶1The deed to the demandants describes the boundaries of the easterly end of the lots conveyed as follows : Beginning at an ascertained point at the southeasterly corner, “ thence northerly bounded easterly by land of this grantor to the highway leading from Northampton to Florence; thence northwesterly bounded northeasterly by said highway to land of Jonathan A. Clark.” The matter in controversy is the course of the first of these two lines, and the consequent length of the second.

¶2The tenant contended that the first line was to run as nearly north as possible consistently with any boundary upon the highway, and that the second line therefore could not be more than a foot in length. The demandants contended, and the jury have found, that the first line ran north 60° east, which would carry *578it in the most direct course to the highway, give the demandants a boundary of twenty-five feet on the highway, and allow to the tenant as long a boundary upon the highway as his later deed from the same grantor called for.

¶3It does not appear on the bill of exceptions that the grantor, who once owned all the land in question, ever made any other' deed thereof, or whether the whole evidence is reported. It was not contended for the tenant at the trial, nor at the argument here, that the description was too vague and uncertain to be located at all; but it was assumed by both parties that it was capable of being defined either by the court or the jury.

¶4The only exception taken was to the refusal of the presiding judge to instruct the jury that the demandants’ deed did not give them more than one foot on the highway, and could not include twenty-five feet as they claimed. We are of opinion that this instruction was rightly refused. The first line could not, upon any construction of the deed as applied to the evidence, run due north, without striking the land of Clark west of the highway, and thus wholly rejecting the highway as a monument. It is described in the demandants’ deed not as running due north, but “ northerly,” and its direction, even according to the demandants’ claim, is northerly, though inclining considerably to the east. Bond v. Fay, 8 Allen, 212, 215. How far it should incline to the east does not appear as matter of law upon the face of the deed. Exceptions overruled.

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