Case of the Day – Wednesday, August 25, 2021

SHUT MY MOUTH!

When the Harrises moved in back about 1956, they thought their land extended back well beyond where it actually did. They tended to their land – including the part they thought was theirs but wasn’t – planting flowers, mowing the lawn, and finally nurturing a beautiful break of pine trees along what they thought was the property line.

The Harrises eventually sold the land to their granddaughter, Melissa Watts-Sanders. She likewise believed that the land went back to the trees, and she maintained it as though she owned (which she thought she did). Making her own improvements, she installed a dog pen on the disputed property.

Or perhaps we should we say “soon-to-be disputed property.” Because it seems she had a new neighbor, Mindy Chambliss. Ms. Chambliss did things right. Among those right things was her hiring of a surveyor. The surveyor unsurprisingly found that the land with the dog pen on it really belonged to Mindy.

Ms. Chambliss was not a lawyer (or much of a speller, which is a rapidly-dying art in this day and age). However, she knew some impressive-sounding legal terms – “cease and desist” being among them – so she wrote Ms. Watts-Sanders a missive demanding that she “cease and desist” with the dog pen, and claiming the property she believed to be rightfully hers. In the letter, Ms. Chambliss officiously explained that her survey “does superscede [sic] the fact that the property was maintained for 49 years.”

Maybe it was the spelling. Whatever the reason, Ms. Watts-Sanders was not suitably cowed by the letter, so Ms. Chambliss sued. When she did, Ms. Watts-Sanders defended by arguing that a new boundary line had been established over the years by acquiescence. Nonsense, said Ms. Chambliss. Pine trees did not a boundary make, and none of Ms. Watts-Sanders’ predecessors had ever expressed an intention to occupy the land. And, Ms. Chambliss said, proudly showing her “cease and desist” letter to the Court, she had told Ms. Watts-Sanders about the surveyor’s findings.

‘Say what?’ the court asked, looking at the letter. ‘You mean Ms. Watts-Sanders and her people had maintained the property for 49 years?’ Well, the Court said – notwithstanding Ms. Chambliss’s opinion – that really did “superscede” something. In fact, given that Watts-Sanders and her predecessors’ people maintained and used the land for half a century without any complaint from Chambliss’s predecessors, the case was pretty compelling that someone had acquiesced to the pine tree boundary.

The lesson here? Clients, let your lawyers be your mouthpiece. Ms. Chambliss’s smug “explanation” of what trumped what turned out to be an admission against her own interests, and ended up being a pretty costly law lecture.

Chambliss v. Watts-Sanders, 2008-AR-0131.003, 2008 Ark. App. LEXIS 85, 2008 WL 241288 (Ark.App., Jan. 30, 2008). Mindy Chambliss and Melissa Watts-Sanders share a common backyard boundary. The dispute began after Ms. Chambliss ordered a survey which showed that Ms. Watts-Sanders had built a dog pen on Ms. Chambliss’s land. Ms. Watts-Sanders claimed property up to a row of pine trees planted on the disputed tract, but those trees were 23 feet east of the surveyed boundary line. Ms. Chambliss demanded that Ms. Watts-Sanders remove the dog pen, claiming to Ms. Watts-Sanders in writing that her survey superseded the fact that Watts-Sanders maintained the property for 49 years.

The property formerly belonged to Watts-Sanders’ grandparents, Vivian and Loren Harris. The Harrises bought the property in 1956 and built a house there. They later planted the pine trees and developed the flower bed toward the rear of the property. Mr. Harris cut the grass between the flower bed and the pine trees and that he treated the pine trees as the boundary between the two properties. No one except the Harrises used the disputed area since 1956. Ms. Watts-Sanders received the deed to the property from her grandmother in 2004. She noted that the pine trees were planted as close to in a line as possible and that the trees marked the boundary line between the properties.

Ms. Chambliss purchased her property in 2003, and thought her land went to the concrete edging of the flowerbed. She was unaware that Ms. Watts-Sanders claimed possession of the disputed property until she placed the dog pen. Ms. Chambliss claimed that she had maintained the disputed property since purchasing it in 2003 and that she never saw Watts-Sanders on the property. The trial court found that Watts-Sanders had established the row of trees as the boundary by acquiescence and quieted title to the disputed property in her name. It also awarded her $250 in damages for the cost of rebuilding the dog pen. Ms. Chambliss appealed.

Held: The decision in favor of Ms. Watts-Sanders was upheld. Ms. Chambliss argued that the tree line was not a physical and permanent boundary, there was no evidence that Watts-Sanders’ predecessors occupied the disputed property, and there was no proof that any of Watts-Sanders’s predecessors-in-interest took any actions to indicate that the disputed land belonged to them.

The Court noted that the mere existence of a fence or some other line, without evidence of mutual recognition, cannot sustain a finding of boundary by acquiescence. However, silent acquiescence is sufficient, and the boundary line usually can inferred from the parties’ conduct over so many years. A party trying to prove that a boundary line has been established by acquiescence need only show that both parties at least tacitly accepted the non-surveyed line as the true boundary line.

Here, the Court said, the law merely required the boundary line to be some monument tacitly accepted as visible evidence of a dividing line, and the row of pine trees sufficed. The evidence was sufficient to show that Ms. Watts-Sanders and the Harrises occupied the disputed area, including evidence that Mr. Harris planted the pine trees and Ms. Chambliss’s own ill-advised admission that Ms. Watts-Sanders and the Harrises had maintained the disputed tract for forty-nine years.

Finally, evidence showed that only Ms. Watts-Sanders and her predecessors used the disputed tract. A boundary by acquiescence exists in cases where one party has used land belonging to another and the true landowner did nothing to assert his interest. Here, Ms. Watts-Sanders’ family’s use of the property remained undisturbed for almost 50 years. No one objected when her mother had one of the trees removed. Acquiescence can result from the silent conduct of the parties, and the fact that none of appellant’s predecessors used the property east of the tree line could be seen as tacit acceptance of the tree line as the boundary between the two properties.

– Tom Root