Loutre Land and Timber Co. v. Roberts

Since 1943, Marie Morgan and her family (the Morgan family) had owned an 80-acre tract of land (tract 3) and an adjacent 20-acre tract (tract 2), or a total of 100 acres. Edward Roberts and his ancestors (the Roberts family) owned tract 10, which was immediately south of tract 3. There was an official recorded boundary separating tract 3 on the north from tract 10 on the south (the official boundary). However, for well over 30 years, a fence ran east to west through the middle of tract 10. For as long as the fence was there, the Morgan family had adversely possessed the approximately 15-acre area between the official boundary and the fence (the disputed tract). In 2002, the succession of Morgan (the succession) sold tracts 2 and 3 to Loutre Land and Timber Co. (Loutre) (plaintiff) via warranty deed. The warranty deed also transferred “all rights of prescription, whether acquisitive or liberative, to which [the succession] may be entitled” to Loutre, without specifying a particular tract. Loutre planted pine-tree seedlings in the disputed tract along the fence. In 2003, per Roberts’s request, the succession executed a quitclaim deed conveying the disputed tract to Roberts. Thereafter, Roberts entered the disputed tract and attempted to erect a new fence, destroying Loutre’s seedlings in the process. Loutre sued Roberts, arguing that it owned the disputed tract. Roberts responded that he was the rightful owner. After trial proceedings, the court entered judgment in Loutre’s favor, finding that Loutre was the owner by virtue of acquisitive prescription and that the succession had intended to convey all the land north of the fence to Loutre. The court of appeal reversed based on the notion that Roberts’s recorded deed, which specifically described the disputed tract, trumped the nondescript prescriptive rights acquired by Loutre. The Louisiana Supreme Court granted review.