Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

56 Ark. 44

Watson v. Crutcher

Supreme Court of Arkansas

Decided April 9, 1892

Supreme Court of Arkansas · decided 1892-04-09

Crutcher brought suit against Watson to • compel specific performance of a written contract to convey, among other lands, the north half of the southeast quarter of section three in township six north, range three west, less twenty-five acres off the south side thereof.

Relies on Mooney v. Cooledge · St. L., I. M. & S. Railway Co. v. Beidler

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1892-04-09

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently November 1969

8 state decisions

3018921900191019201930194019501960decided

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 →

Cockriee, C. J.

¶1The appellant concedes the appellee’s right to a specific performance. There is no con- . troversy as to the quantity of land he should convey— the location of twenty-five acres of it in the north half of the southeast quarter gives rise to the only controversy. The appellant maintains and undertook to prove that it should be laid off in an irregular form. The description, as given in the written obligation to convey, after the call for other tracts by legal subdivisions, is as follows’: North half of southeast quarter of section three, in a given township and range, “less twenty-five acres off the south side.”

¶2As to whether parol proof was admissible to explain or vary this description, in the absence of proof of a mistake, we need not determine. Prima facie, at least, it manifests the intention to lay the twenty-five acres off in a parallelogram with the whole of the south line of the north half of the quarter section in question as its base. That is the effect of the decision of Beidler v. Railway, 45 Ark. 17. If the appellant could raise an ambiguity out of the description so as to let in parol proof of a different intention, or if there was a mistake which he desired to correct, the burden was upon him to prove his contention by a clear preponderance of the testimony. Mooney v. Cooledge, 30 Ark. 640. In that he has failed, and the judgment should be affirmed.

/56/ark/44 · .json · Public domain