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18 N.C. 371

Dougherty v. . Stepp

Supreme Court of North Carolina

Decided December 5, 1835

Supreme Court of North Carolina · decided 1835-12-05

This was an action of trespass quare clausum fregit, tried at Buncombe on the last Circuit, before his Honor Judge Martin. The only proof introduced by the plaintiff to establish an act of trespass, was, that the defendant had entered on the unenclosed land of the plaintiff, with a surveyor and chain carriers, and actually surveyed a part of it, claiming it as his own, but without marking trees or cutting bushes.

Cited in Bouvier (1914)’s definition of “Trespass”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1835-12-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently June 1988

1 district · 6 state decisions

301835184018501860187018801890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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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*372 Ruffin, Chief Justice.

¶1 — In the opinion of the Court, there is error in the instructions given to the jury. The amount of damages may depend on the acts done on the land, and the extent of injury to it therefrom. But it is an elementary principle, that every unauthorised, and therefore unlawful entry, into the close of another, is a trespass. From every such entry against the will of the possessor, the law infers some damage; if nothing more, the treading down the grass or the herbage, or as here, the shrubbery. Had the locus in quo been under cultivation or enclosed, there would, have been no doubt of the plaintiff’s right to recover. Now our Courts have for a long time past held, that if there be no adverse possession, the title makes the land the owner’s dose. Making the survey and marking trees,' or making it without marking, differ only in the degree, and not in the nature of the injury. It is the entry that constitutes the trespass. There is no statute, nor rule of reason, that will make a wilful entry into the land of another, upon an unfounded claim of right, innocent, .which one, who sat up no title to the land, could not justify or excuse. On the contrary, the pretended ownership aggravates the wrong. Let the judgment be reversed, and a new trial granted.

¶2 Per Curiam. Judgment reversed.

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