Bagley v. People
| Decision Date | 21 April 1880 |
| Citation | 43 Mich. 355,5 N.W. 415 |
| Court | Michigan Supreme Court |
| Parties | BAGLEY v. PEOPLE. |
An alley is not a public highway, so that an obstruction thereof will be regarded as a public wrong.
Certiorari to recorder's court of Detroit.
Wisner & Speed, for plaintiff.
F.G. Russell and F.A. Baker, for defendants.
An alley can, in no proper or legal sense, be considered as a public highway, or governed by rules relating thereto. While the city may, and undoubtedly has, certain limited rights therein for municipal purposes, yet the public have no general right of way over or through the same. It is designed more especially for the use and accommodation of the owners of property abutting thereon, and to give the public the same unqualified rights therein that they have in and to the use of the public streets would defeat the very end and object intended. Paul v. Detroit, 32 Mich. 110.
Any obstruction to the right of passage through or to the proper use of any alley, by those entitled thereto, cannot, therefore, be considered as a public wrong. The grievance, if any, is an individual one, and for which there may, for a wilful or unnecessary obstruction, be a private remedy.
Neither do we think the court could assume, as of course, that the platform complained of was an obstruction, certainly not a nuisance. On the contrary, it may have been a very great convenience to the owner or occupant of the property, and have advanced the very interest and purpose such ways are intended to subserve, by affording means of expediting business done there very materially; or, at all events, not causing any unusual inconvenience to the other occupants of the same block in their legitimate use of the alley.
The judgment must be set aside, and the proceedings quashed.
(The other justices concurred.)
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