Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

86 Miss. 241

Smith v. Brothers

Mississippi Supreme Court

Decided April 15, 1905

Mississippi Supreme Court · decided 1905-04-15

Pbom the chancery court of Olay county. How. Heket L. Mtjldbow, Chancellor. Mrs. Smith and others, appellants, were complainants, and Brothers, Jr., the appellee, was defendant in the court below. From a decree in defendant’s favor the complainants appealed to the supreme court.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1905-04-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently April 2014

6 state decisions

20190519101920193019401950196019701980199020002010decided

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 →

Whittteld, O. J.,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2The description in the tax deed is as follows: “Home lot in lot 6, block 4, ward 1.” There may have been several “home-lots” in lot 6, and we think, under the authority of Bowers v. Andrews, 52 Miss., 596, the description is plainly void for patent ambiguity. The deed must stand or fall by itself. The assessment roll cannot aid the description in the deed. The doctrine of Bowers v. Andrewsis still the law, as a matter of' course, notwithstanding sec. 3817 and like sections of the code of 1892. The fact that if the assessment roll furnishes some clew, which, if followed up by parol proof, would identify the-land as described on the assessment roll, does not at all affect’ the other proposition announced in Bowers v. Andrews—that a description in a tax deed will be void if the ambiguity therein is patent.

¶3Reversed and remanded for decree in accordance with this-opinion.

/86/miss/241 · .json · Public domain