Supreme Court Rules That the Court Gets To Play Connect the Dots, Not the Jury

In Pardue v. Brinegar, an opinion filed on January 29, 2010, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the North Carolina Court of Appeals in regard to whether a judge or a jury gets the final decision on what a boundary line should look like when the parties can only agree to the markers that are located on the boundary line. In doing so, the Supreme Court accepted the logic of Judge Steelman dissent. See Pardue v. Brinegar, ____ N.C. App. ____, 681 S.E.2d 435 (2009).

In Pardue, Pardue commenced a quiet title action against her neighbors, the Brinegars, to determine the true boundary between the two parties’ respective properties. In reality, the parties were fighting over who owned 0.79 acres.

The deeds in the Pardue chain described the boundary with Brinegar as follows:

BEGINNING on a white oak in the old S.P. Smith line and runs up the branch, South 11 ½
degrees West 32 poles to a maple, at the forks of said branch; then South 62 degrees East
up the east prong of said branch 56 poles to a post oak on the east side of the public road.

The deeds in the Brinegar chain described the boundary with Pardue as follows:

[From two white oaks in the S.P. Smith line on the west bank of a branch] then South 20
deg. West up said branch 32 poles to a maple at the fork of the branch; thence South 60
deg. East up the left prong 56 poles to a white oak (now down) on the South side of the
public road.

The parties agreed that the boundary line was marked by (i) the white oak in the S.P. Smith line, (ii) the maple at the forks of the branch, and (iii) the oak on the public road. The parties disagreed about whether “up the branch” meant that the boundary between the markers was following the meandering path of a stream or whether it meant in straight lines from each marker.

The boundary dispute made it to a trial. At the close of evidence, Pardue moved for a directed verdict on the theory that “up the branch” meant that the boundary between the markers was following the meandering path of the stream. The Court denied the directed verdict motion and submitted the issue to the jury. The jury determined that the boundary was made up of straight line segments between the three markers.

In his dissent that was accepted by the Supreme Court, Judge Steelman noted the accepted law that a deed is to be construed by the court and not the jury. Thus, Judge Steelman reasoned that when the language of a deed is clear and unequivocal, the deed must be given effect according to its terms, and a court could not speculate that the grantor intended otherwise.

Applying this law, Judge Steelman noted that the Pardue deeds and the Brinegar deeds each stated that the boundary runs “up the branch.” Judge Steelman also noted that neither the Pardue deeds nor the Brinegar deeds referenced straight lines between the markers. In North Carolina, “up the river” is established to mean the same thing as “along the river” unless there is something else besides course and distance to control it. Therefore, Judge Steelman found that the express language in the deeds showed that the grantors intended for the boundary line to run along the branch.

Judge Steelman’s pointed out that the cases cited by the majority recognized that the call for a permanent natural monument controls the boundary rather than any distance contained in the deed. Applying this law, the fact that the branch was a natural monument controls over the fact that the distances included in the deed lend more to an interpretation that the boundary was in straight line segments.

There are two key points to take away from the Supreme Court’s decision to accept Judge Steelman’s theory.

1. In determining boundaries, “Up the river” means the same thing as “along the river” unless there is something else besides course and distance to control it.

2. A reference to a permanent natural monument control a boundary over any distances contained in a description.