Commonwealth v. Inhabitants of Holliston
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Indictment, in Middlesex, for neglect to keep in repair a road, alleged to be a highway, in Holliston. At the trial in the superior court, before Scudder, J., the defendants contended that the road was not a highway.
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Indictment, in Middlesex, for neglect to keep in repair a road, alleged to be a highway, in Holliston. At the trial in the superior court, before Scudder, J., the defendants contended that the road was not a highway. The Commonwealth admitted that it could not prove that the road was laid out and established as á highway in the manner prescribed by statute; but contended that, before 1846, it had either become a highway by dedication, or been laid out for many years and no record of the laying out been kept. “ For the purpose of explaining to the jury the relative location of the premises…
1Opinion of the CourtChapman, C. J.
The map was used, not as legal evidence in the case, but to enable the witness, into whose hand it was put, to point out to the jury the location of the alleged way, so far as it was correctly represented thereon. For this purpose it was within the discretion of the judge to allow it to be used, Hollenbeck v. Rowley, 8 Allen, 473, 475.
Since the St. of 1846, c. 203, highways cannot be established by dedication. Commonwealth v. Taunton, 16 Gray, 228. Before that, time they could be thus established, as well as by prescriptive use. In Jennings v. Tisbury, 5 Gray, 73, the court say that “ a large…
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