Farnum v. Blackstone Canal Corp.

STORY, Circuit Justice.

Assuming for the present that the evidence makes out a case of real substantive damage to the plaintiffs’ mills, by the raising of the Woonsocket dam, the next question is, whether the record presents any justification of the act of raising the Woonsocket dam on the part of the plaintiffs. And it is most important to the parties in this aspect of the case, to advert to some of the facts, which are indisputable. The plaintiffs, in the summer of 1825. built a dam across the Blaekstone river in the town of Hendon in the state of Massachusetts, and erected a woollen mill in…