Gallentine

The defendants appeal from a decree quieting the plaintiff’s title to a lot of land in the principal business block in the town of Ojai, formerly known as Nordhoff, in Ventura County. The decree also required the removal of a wall built within the exterior boundaries of the plaintiff’s lot.

The dispute concerned a strip of land 1.67 feet wide along the division line between the lots of the plaintiff and the defendants. According to an old map these lots were near the middle of a block shown on the map to have a frontage of 472 feet, but by actual measurement it was only 470.33 feet long. Early deeds called for measurements from the southeast corner of the block to the nearest corners of lots conveyed, or boundary lines of earlier conveyed lots so located. The descriptions used in the deeds in the plaintiff’s chain of title all related directly or indirectly to the southeast corner of the block. So, also, did the earlier deeds in the defendants’ chain of title, but in a deed containing such a reference a predecessor of the defendants added a recital calling for a distance from the southwest corner of the block computed from the erroneous map call and, therefore, 1.67 feet too…