United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Guaranty Title & Trust Corp. v. United States, 264 U.S. 200 (1924)

Guaranty Title & Trust Corporation v. United States

No. 109

Argued November 14, 1923

Decided February 18, 1924

264 U.S. 200

Syllabus

1. Under the Virginia Code, 1919, § 5805, providing that no person shall make an entry on, or bring action to recover, any land lying east of the Alleghany Mountains but within 15 years next after the time when the right to do so first accrued to himself or to some person through whom he claims, adverse possession for the required period not only bars the owner's right of entry or action, but vests title in the disseisor. P. 264 U. S. 204.

2. The disseisor need not have a deed or writing giving color of title or furnishing foundation for belief or claim of ownership or legal right to enter and take possession; his intention to appropriate and use the land as his own to the exclusion of all others suffices. Id.

3. Acts sufficient to apprise everyone of exclusive occupation and use, with unequivocal, emphatic, and public assertion of ownership, held to have met the requirements of the Virginia law governing title by adverse possession. P. 264 U. S. 205.

4. Where one of two rival claimants in the Court of Claims was rightly awarded the judgment, but payment of the money subsequently appropriated by Congress was withheld because of an appeal taken by the other in which the former intervened as appellee, this Court, in affirming the judgment, required the appellant to pay the successful claimant costs and interest on the judgment from the date of the appropriation until funds should be

Page 264 U. S. 201

available for payment of the judgment by the United States. P. 264 U. S. 206.

57 Ct.Clms. 620 affirmed.

Appeal from a judgment of the Court of Claims awarding recovery for land taken by the United States to one of two rival claimants of the title. The defeated claimant, Guaranty Title & Trust Corporation, as receiver, which had intervened in the Court of Claims, took the appeal. The other claimant, Norfolk-Hampton Roads Company, original plaintiff, was permitted to intervene here as an appellee.