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51 Tex. 84

Castleman v. Pouton

Texas Supreme Court

Decided July 1, 1879

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1879-07-01

Tried below before the Hon. Everett Lewis. This was an action of trespass, brought by T. J. Pouton, to try title for the land described in the petition. The defendants pleaded not guilty. The cause was submitted to the court without a jury, and a judgment was rendered for the plaintiff for the land claimed, and defendants appealed.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“the question was not purely one of law, to be decided according to the precedence to be given to the different calls, but was a mixed question of law and fact, in determining which, both the rules of law and the evidence as to the footsteps of the surveyor were to be considered.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Miller v. Southland Life Ins. Co.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1879-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently December 1969

4 state decisions

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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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Gould, Associate Justice.

¶1There was evidence of corners and a partly-marked line corresponding with the calls in the Ryan patent, other than the calls for the Hope survey. From this evidence, as well as from the great discrepancy between the distance called for and the distance required to reach the *88Hope survey, the court below, passing (instead of a jury) on the facts, appears to have concluded that the surveyor, in making the Kyan survey, mistook this partly-marked line for the eastern line of the Hope survey. The question was not purely one of law, to be decided according to the precedence to be given to the different calls, but was a mixed question of law and fact, in determining which, both the rules of law and the evidence as to the footsteps of the surveyor were to be considered. (Booth v. Upshur, 26 Tex., 71; Booth v. Strippleman, 26 Tex., 441; Burnett v. Burriss, 39 Tex., 502; Browning v. Atkinson, 37 Tex., 659; Jones v. Burgett, 46 Tex., 292.)

¶2In view of the difficulty of believing that in measuring a line of eight hundred and eight varas a surveyor could commit a mistake of about six hundred varas, so as to enlarge a survey intended to embrace but four hundred and twenty-one acres to over seven hundred acres, and of the facility with which a marked line parallel to the east line of the Hope survey might be mistaken for that east line, we are of opinion that the additional evidence was sufficient to support the judgment treating the calls for course and distance as, under the surrounding circumstances, the controlling calls.

¶3It may he that the western lines of the Byan survey were never actually run out; hut it cannot be assumed that the surveyor thus failed to do his duty; nor, if that assumption could be entertained, would it change our opinion as to the proper disposition of the case.

¶4The judgment establishes that there was no conflict between the two grants; and that fact being established, there was no other question in the case.

¶5The judgment is affirmed.

¶6Affirmed.

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