Black v. Thomson
| Decision Date | 22 May 1886 |
| Citation | 7 N.E. 184,107 Ind. 162 |
| Parties | Black and others v. Thomson and others. |
| Court | Indiana Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from Carroll circuit court.
Applegate & Pollard, for appellants.
S. D. Boyd, for appellees.
Samuel Black and more than 100 others, as resident freeholders of the county of Carroll, in this state, presented a petition to the board of commissioners of that county at its June term, 1884, praying for the establishment and construction of a gravel road upon a certain route and between certain points therein specified. The board appointed viewers and an engineer, as required by the statute, and ordered that they should meet and proceed to discharge the duties which had been assigned to them, on the sixth day of October, 1884. No order of continuance or order of any other kind was made in the cause at the next regular session, in September, 1884, but at a special session which was held in that month the board ordered that the time of the meeting of the viewers and engineer should be postponed until the sixth day of November, 1884. The county auditor thereupon notified the viewers and engineer of their appointment, and of the time of their meeting lastly above named, and also gave notice of the time and place of such meeting, by four weeks' publication in a weekly newspaper of the county. On said sixth day of November, 1884, the viewers and engineer met, as they had been notified to do, and, after qualifying as required by law, proceeded to examine the proposed line of road, and on the ninth day of December, 1884, made a report of their proceedings to the board of commissioners, expressing the opinion, among other things, that the contemplated road would be a work of public utility. Opposition being made to the report thus submitted, and Francis Thomson and others having remonstrated against the construction of the proposed road, the matter was continued until the March term, 1885, of the board, during which term the report was confirmed, and an order was entered for the construction of the improvement prayed for in the petition. Thomson and the other remonstrators appealed from the order made, as lastly above stated, to the circuit court, in which, at the next succeeding term, they moved to dismiss the petition upon the ground that as the time for the meeting of the viewers and engineer was fixed at a time beyond the September session, 1884, of the board of commissioners, and as the board made no order of continuance or other order in the premises, at that session, the jurisdiction of board over the subject-matter of the proceeding had lapsed, and that thereafter such jurisdiction had not been in any manner regained by the board. This motion was sustained by the circuit court, and the petition was dismissed, at the costs of the petitioners.
Whether the commissioners have the power, in a case like this, to fix the time at which the viewers and engineer...
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