Gardner v. Cumberland Town Council

I respectfully dissent. I am of the opinion that the majority’s conclusions in this case are incorrect and that the Gardners were deprived of their right to procedural due process. Because the Gardners enjoyed a constitutionally protected property interest in accessing their land through this public roadway, and the statute under which a municipality is authorized to abandon a street or highway requires that specific procedural guarantees be afforded to the abutters before an abandonment decree is issued, this abandonment order ought not stand.

This Court has declared that “[a]n abandonment of…