Board of County Commissioners v. MacPhail

Once upon a time the County Commissioners of Harford County could decide calmly, as an uncomplicated part of their routine duties, what road in the county they would improve, and when and how. That was before the appellee, Barry S. MacPhail, who had retired as president of the Yankees baseball club, came down from New York in 1941 and bought some four hundred acres of farm land in the Third Election District of the county. Through the farm ran part of a county public road four miles long, a dirt road, described as “as bad a road as is possible to find in Harford County”, winding, with bad…