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9 Port. 171

Bennet v. Morris

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided January 15, 1839

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1839-01-15

Trespass to try title — before Pickens, J. This action of trespass, was brought by the defendant in error, against the plaintiff in error, to recover a lot of land in the city of Mobile.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1839-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently April 1917

5 state decisions

20183918401850186018701880189019001910decided

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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ORMOND, J.

¶1The case of Thomas Sturdevant against the heirs of-Murrell, decided at the last term of this court, is decisive of the present-question. In that case, as. in this, the objection was to the uncertainty of the verdict and judgment. - In that case, also, as in this, the verdict did not ascertain, with any precision, the land withheld-from the plaintiff, and of which the sheriff, on the writ of habere facias possessionam, was to put him in possession.

¶2The verdict, in this case, is for “one hundred and twenty feet on the south side of St. Michael street, commencing at the centre of the house occupied by James Wilson, in 1817j and running sixty feet east and west, *173by one hundred and twenty feet south, and assess the damages, &c.”

¶3This description would suit any lot of one hundred and twenty feet in St. Michael street, and therefore certainly too vague, unless the generality of the description can be controlled by its being said to be opposite the cen-tre of the house occupied by Jumes Wilson, in eighteen hundred and seventeen. If, instead of referring to the occupancy of a house by a person twenty years since, the reference had been to some monument, or other actually existing thing, it might have been sufficient, by affording some certain data on which the sheriff might act, in executing the judgment of the court. What house a person occupied twenty years since, might be a matter of great doubt, and would be so uncertain, as to leave the whole matter almost entirely in the discretion of the sheriff.

¶4It was urged by the defendant’s counsel, that the plaintiff below must take possession at his. peril, and would be governed by the evidence given at the trial. But this court held, in the case above cited, that the rule insisted on, which seems to prevail in England, has not been adopted in this State, owing, in a great degree, perhaps, to the^-difference between the action of ejectment in that country, and the action of trespass to try titles, in this.

¶5The verdict should describe, with reasonable certainty, the land intended to be covered thereby, or the judgment founded on it will be reversed on error.

¶6Let the judgment be reversed, and the cause remanded.

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