Higginson v. Inhabitants of Nahant
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Bill in Equity against the inhabitants of Nahant and the selectmen thereof, to restrain them from constructing a way which had been laid out by the selectmen.
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Bill in Equity against the inhabitants of Nahant and the selectmen thereof, to restrain them from constructing a way which had been laid out by the selectmen. At the hearing in this court, before Gray, J., the plaintiffs offered to show that the way as located is wholly upon their lands and is bounded upon their lands on all sides except where it enters the same, that it leads to no other road or way or landing-place, public or private, .and can be used for none of the purposes of business or duty, or of access to the land of any other person, but was laid out with a design to provide access,…
1Opinion of the CourtHoar, J.
There are three principal questions presented for adjudication upon this report; the first two requiring a decision of the rights of the plaintiffs, and the third concerning only the remedy.
The first and most important of these is whether, when a town way has been laid out by the selectmen of a town with all the forms prescribed by the statutes of the Commonwealth, and has been duly accepted by the town, it is competent, in order to impeach the validity of these proceedings, to show that the way is wholly on the land of the plaintiffs; that it enters their land from a highway and returns to…
2Cases cited2 opinions
- Cragie v. MellenMassachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · 1809
- Town of Woodstock v. GallupSupreme Court of Vermont · 1856