Opinion
June 1, 1951.
Appeal from the Circuit Court for Broward County, George W. Tedder, J.
C. Shelby Dale, Fort Lauderdale, for appellant.
Hamilton Langbein, Edgar G. Hamilton and Irwin L. Langbein, all of West Palm Beach, for appellees.
Saunders, Buckley O'Connell and English, Lester O'Bryan, all of Fort Lauderdale, Landefeld Kerr, Hollywood, Edward L. Semple, Miami, and Boyd H. Anderson, Jr., Fout Lauderdale, amicus curiae.
East Coast Land and Cattle Company, Inc., hereinafter referred to as plaintiff, filed a bill of complaint to quiet its tax title to a large acreage of land in Broward County. R.C. Hawkins and others were named parties defendant and will hereinafter be referred to as defendant since Hawkins was the only one who resisted the bill of complaint. Defendant filed his answer including an amended answer in which he challenged the validity of the plaintiff's tax deed on the ground that the description of the lands therein was vague, indefinite and uncertain. On final hearing the chancellor found for the plaintiff and entered a decree quieting title to its lands. The defendant appealed.
The sole question for determination is whether or not the following description: Tract 30, Section 9, Township 48 South, Range 41 East, 20 acres in the County of Broward, State of Florida, as contained in the plaintiff's tax deed (and in various deeds between individual parties relating thereto) is legally sufficient to identify and locate said land.
Defendant contends that the question so stated is one of law, that the description was patently defective, that it could not be cured or made certain by parole evidence and that the trial court committed error in holding it good. Schouten v. Hunt, 146 Fla. 360, 200 So. 923; Freeland v. P.P. R. Co., 160 Fla. 151, 33 So.2d 857 and similar cases are relied on to support this contention.
Plaintiff contends on the other hand, that the question is one of fact and relies on the sufficiency of the evidence adduced to support his contention. The plaintiff introduced in evidence plat of the pertinent acreage, including a map showing the portion of Broward County in which the lands are located. The plat and map are supported by four deeds which describe the lands in question with several thousand additional acres without reference to any recorded plat.
The plat, map and deeds are supported by the evidence of seven witnesses who were familiar with land conveyancing and surveys in Broward County, one of whom was the County Engineer who was also a registered engineer, one was an abstractor in Broward County, another was Clerk of the Circuit Court of the County, another was an employee of the Tax Collector's office, two were attorneys of many years experience in the County, another had been in the real estate business in the County for over thirty years and the last one was a landowner familiar with surveys in the County. These witnesses testified, (1) that they could locate the land of the plaintiff from the description in the deed, (2) that there is only one subdivision of this section or area recorded in Broward County and that the description could apply to no other parcel of land, (3) that no one in Broward County could be misled by the description, (4) that said description was not vague or ambiguous, but was clear and certain, (5) that said description was generally understood by lawyers, abstractors, engineers, real estate dealers and others having to do with land titles in Broward County, and that it had been approved and followed by them for more than thirty years, (6) that five per cent of all deeds in the County and 50 per cent of the land in the area had been conveyed by similar description, (7) that in tax certificates, tax receipts, tax deeds and tax rolls lands were described in the same manner, that conveyances by the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund and the Board of Commissioners of Everglades Drainage District were made by the same description, that all odd-numbered sections in the area were divided into 32 equal tracts by uniform plan and that all maps used by lawyers, abstractors and real estate men in the County follow the same pattern.
It appears that the lands involved in this litigation with others were purchased by Florida Fruit Land Company, more than 35 years ago. At that time the lands in the Everglades had not been surveyed, but the lands adjacent to the Everglades had been surveyed. Confronted with that situation the Florida Fruit Lands Company provided its own formula for marketing and conveying its lands and in doing so, divided the odd-numbered sections into 32 equal tracts of twenty acres each, more or less. The tracts in each section are numbered in uniform manner, the North and South section lines being divided into four parts and the East and West sections into eight parts. For more than thirty years it has been the practice to convey lands in this area by Tracts, Sections, Township and Range, without naming the Florida Fruit Lands Company subdivision. As heretofore stated, the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund, the Board of Commissioners of Everglades Drainage District and others have conveyed by this formula. It is well known and approved by lawyers, conveyancers and abstractors in Broward County.
It is quite true that the deeds involved in the Freeland and Schouten cases heretofore cited, were in substantially the same form as the deed involved in the case at bar, but they were totally deficient in that the evidence in both cases showed that the lands described in the deeds could not be located without the plat and there was nothing to connect them with the formula followed here. All the witnesses in the instant case testified that the formula used to describe the lands in question was well known in Broward County and that they could locate the lands by it. It may be that a stranger to this formula would have trouble locating lands by it, but having become familiar with it and the custom of conveyancing by it in the locality he would have no difficulty with it.
We think the record shows conclusively that when land purchasers in Broward County are advised that their lands are in the Florida Fruit Lands Subdivision, they will have no trouble in locating them from the description given in the formula. This holding does not contravene the rule announced in Schouten v. Hunt, Freeland v. P.P. R. Co., and similar cases, wherein we held that the description in a tax deed must be certain in itself or at least capable of being made certain by matters referred to in the deed. Evidence aliunde not referred to in the deed cannot be used to ascertain the land intended to be conveyed. The case at bar is in a different category and is not ruled by these cases.
Another factor supporting this conclusion is that the record discloses that Florida Fruit Lands Company has subdivided many sections, at least fifteen per cent of Broward County, and marketed the lands by this formula. Descriptions are entered by it in the court house every day, the people of Broward County are thoroughly familiar with it, approve it and when they find a parcel of land described by a numbered Tract, in an odd-numbered section, it refers as directly to Florida Fruit Lands Subdivision of the Section as would a Lot and Block description in the City of Fort Lauderdale or any other municipality. When the Schouten, Freeland and similar cases were decided, no one ever thought that they closed the door to new factual situations that would produce new precedents. The commendable feature of our system of jurisprudence is that when it is manipulated by those bent on doing justice it comes up with that kind of answer to the most complex set of circumstances. Such is the life of the law.
The gist of this case is whether or not a well known formula for land description, that was evolved by Florida Fruit Lands Company out of necessity should be approved. True it is somewhat unorthodox but the evidence shows without question that it leads one to his lands. That is all any formula for locating lands is good for.
The chancellor approved it and we feel impelled to affirm his judgment.
Affirmed.
CHAPMAN and ROBERTS, JJ., concur.
ADAMS, J., concurs specially.
SEBRING, C.J., THOMAS and HOBSON, JJ., dissent.
This specially concurring opinion is filed because of future importance of this decision to a large number of valuable properties and its close similarity to several of our earlier decisions.
In the opinion of the writer, the prime question is not whether the description shown in the deed is good, but whether parol evidence of the character offered is admissible to show a good description. If the former should be the question then the case of Schouten v. Hunt, 146 Fla. 360, 200 So. 923, would compel us to hold the description insufficient; whereas if parol evidence is admissible then our opinion in Crowder v. Miami Beach First National Bank, Fla., 50 So.2d 174, leads to the contrary.
Our duty is to approve a description, if possible, without doing violence to the intent of the parties and the plain mandate of the law. It is also our duty to lend a sympathetic hand and cooperative attitude to the other branches of government.
We have a factual situation here with little precedent. The United States Government did not survey this property. Title was passed to the state; the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund, a state agency, authorized a survey. Only the outside section lines to each township were surveyed.
The interior and unsurveyed lands came into private ownership and were then surveyed and platted according to a plat and plan which met with the approval of the Trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund. This plat, although private in nature, served the various political units of the sovereign in the matter of levying and collecting taxes for over twenty-five years. The present record differentiates this case from the several other cases of which the Hunt case, supra, is one, in that here we have an abundance of highly competent and wholly uncontradicted evidence to sustain the description. Then, too, we may take judicial notice of the records of the I.I. Board in regard to its recognition of this survey. The law is generally accepted that parole evidence may be resorted to for the purpose of locating, but not to describe land. See Lente v. Clarke, 22 Fla. 515, 1 So. 149; Conroy v. Woodcock, 53 Fla. 582, 43 So. 693; Boley v. McMillan, 66 Fla. 159, 63 So. 703. See 16 Am.Jur., section 262, pg. 585, section 285, pg. 599; 6 Thompson on Real Property, section 3287, pg. 468, Office of Extrinsic Evidence as Applied to the Description.
This property is a class of a vast and valuable acreage divided into numerous ownerships and spreading over the most valuable part of the Everglades. All administrative agencies on state and county level have understood the formula and used it for more than a generation, and for us to reject it in the face of the evidence presented here would help no one and precipitate untold confusion and expense. For that reason, I join in the opinion and judgment of affirmance.