Wheeler

By this action plaintiffs claim ownership to a strip of land ten feet in width by four hundred feet in depth, and complain of an alleged trespass upon said property by defendants, and they seek damages for injuries committed and an injunction to restrain a recurrence thereof.

Defendants, a municipal" corporation and its superintendent of streets, justify the acts complained of on the ground that the land in question is a portion of a public street, which it is the purpose and intention of defendants to improve and maintain as such. Defendants claim in that behalf that the ten-foot strip constitutes the westerly portion of Thirty-sixth Avenue, one of the public highways and thoroughfares of the city of Oakland, and base such contention upon the following facts:

On July 19> 1876, one James Lane, being then the owner of the land in dispute and of contiguous territory, granted to Joseph B. Hogarty a lot fifty feet wide by four hundred odd feet in depth, and in this same instrument also conveyed the ten-foot strip adjacent to said lot on its easterly side, with the express limitation that it was to be used for street purposes, this strip being the land now in controversy. The…