Alpers

This action was brought in 1878 by Charles Alpers and Laura A. Mowry, against eighteen defendants, for the partition of a tract of land in San Francisco. The plaintiff's, in addition to setting forth facts authorizing a judgment for the partition of the tract, alleged that they had for a long time occupied and made improvements upon a particular lot within the tract, less in extent than that to which they were entitled, and asked that in the partition that lot be set off to them. George D. Bliss, one of the defendants named in the action, demurred to the complaint, and on February 7, 1879, his demurrer was overruled, and ten days’ time given him within which to answer. No further step appears to have been taken in the action by any of the parties thereto until March 1, 1901, when Bliss filed an answer to the complaint in which he denied that the plaintiffs had any interest in the tract of land, and alleged that he was the owner in fee of the specific parcel thereof described in the complaint. On that day the judge of the superior court, upon the ex parte application of Bliss, made an order, which was filed with the clerk, granting him leave to file in the action a “supplemental…