Griffin v. Daigle

A public road called the New Hope-Whitaker Springs Road was reworked at some point between 1932 and 1935 and renamed Morris Road. The new Morris Road mostly followed the old road, except for a small section in which the new road was laid slightly to the west of the old roadbed. In 1941, a tract of land around the road owned by Green Spillman was partitioned by Spillman’s heirs into five lots. The partition document named the “public road” as a boundary between the different lots. Lot One and Lot Two were adjacent to each other, with Lot Two to the east of Lot One, in the area where the new Morris Road had moved west from the old roadbed. Morris Road and the old roadbed of the New Hope-Whitaker Springs Road therefore lay separated but parallel to each other, on the border between the two lots. In 1955, one of the Spillman heirs sold Lot One to another heir, and the sale document identified the eastern border of the lot as the “public road (New Hope-Whitaker).” This reference was included in all subsequent conveyances of Lot One, up to purchase of the lot in 1985 by Charles Griffin (plaintiff). Lot Two was purchased in 1998 by the Daigles (defendants). A survey done for this purchase marked the western boundary of Lot Two as the center of Morris Road, rather than the center of the old roadbed. Griffin became aware of this purchase survey and filed suit seeking a declaratory judgment that his property extended to the center of the old roadbed rather than only to the center of Morris Road as the Lot Two survey claimed. The trial court held that Morris Road was in fact the border between the lots, and Griffin appealed.