Pilgrim v. Kuipers

Pilgrim (plaintiff) sold part of his land, using a metes-and-bounds deed description, to a predecessor of Kuipers (defendant), with a long-standing fox farm fence sitting near — but never mentioned in — the deed's described boundary. When Kuipers removed part of the fence to build a garage partly on Pilgrim's land, Pilgrim sued to quiet title, and a court-ordered survey used Highway 91, the fence on the northern boundary, and the Beaverhead River as established monuments to fix three sides, then relied on the deed's stated distances (rather than the unreferenced fox farm fence) to locate the final eastern boundary; the trial court adopted this survey, and Pilgrim appealed, arguing the fox farm fence should instead have controlled the eastern boundary.