Price v. McLeod

Citations

• 67 Fla. 171
• 64 So. 769

Syllabus

<p>Partition- — Defense by Asserting Title by Adverse Possession — Proofs to Sustain Same.</p> <p>Where the defendant in a suit for partition sets up as a defense that he has been continuously in the sole and exclusive adverse possession of the whole of the land in dispute ever since his purchase of an undivided one-fifth interest therein at a Sheriff’s sale thereof under a judgment and execution against the owner of such one-fifth interest, and that such adverse possession has ripened into a prescriptive title to the whole of said land as against the complainants and all others; and the proofs show that ever since the purchase of said one-fifth interest by said defendant at said sheriff’s sale, the whole of said land has been continuously unenclosed, unoccupied, unimproved and wild, and that the only acts of ownership by such defendant over the same were occasionally to get fire-wood and fence posts and some clay and sand therefrom, and that he paid the whole of the annual taxes thereon, and got various persons living in the vicinity thereof to prevent trespassers from cutting and taking wood and timber therefrom, and occasionally went over said land in person. Under these circumstances: Held, That no act of his as proven even tended to put his eotenants on notice that he was claiming the entire interest and estate in said land adversely to them, and that the decree of the court below awarding partition of said land to the complainants was proper.</p>