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53 Tex. 557

Knowles v. Torbitt

Texas Supreme Court

Decided May 26, 1880

Texas Supreme Court · decided 1880-05-26

Tried below before the Hon. L. C. Alexander. The opinion: sufficiently states the case, with reference to the point decided.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1880-05-26

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently February 1950

3 state decisions

1018801890190019101920193019401950decided

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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Bonner, Associate Justice.

¶1In this case it is sought to collaterally impeach, as void for want of certainty in the description of the land, a previous judgment of the district court enforcing the vendor’s lien; and also for the same reason, to reject the sheriff’s deed made under the order of sale issued in pursuance of this judgment.

¶2This is the only question insisted upon in argument by counsel for appellant.

¶3The description as given in brief of appellant is as follows:

“Two hundred and ninety-five acres of land conveyed by virtue of a certificate originally granted to one Leonard S. Williams in one tract; twenty-five acres surveyed by virtue of the same certificate in another tract; forty acres of land in another tract, surveyed by virtue of land scrip No.-, issued to Ishmael Kyle; and one hundred and sixty acres of land, surveyed for and patented to F. M. Taylor, as his pre-emption claim; all and each of said tracts of land lying and being in the county of McLennan.”

¶4The record, however, shows that only the two tracts for twenty-five and one hundred and sixty acres were embraced in the judgment.

¶5It does not affirmatively appear but what the description of the land contained the whole of the several tracts embraced in the judgment and the sheriff’s deed. The county in which situated, the number of acres in each tract, and the designation of the particular claim by which located, are set out, and under the authority of adjudicated cases the description is sufficient. Flanagan v. Boggess, 46 Tex., 334; Steinbeck v. Stone, decided at present term, and authorities cited.

¶6This presents a different question from that in Wofford v. McKinna, 23 Tex., 36; Davenport v. Chilton, 25 Tex., 519; Pressley v. Testard, 29 Tex., 201, and Norris v. Hunt, 51 Tex., 609, in which the lands purported to be conveyed ap*559peared to be undefined parts of larger tracts, and in which the ambiguity was patent upon the face of the instruments.

¶7Under the modern practice in ejectment, for reasons peculiar to that action, a general description of the premises sued for is good, unless a different rule is prescribed by statute. Tyler on Ejectment, 393.

¶8Judgment affirmed.

¶9Affirmed.

¶10[Opinion delivered May 26, 1880.]

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