O'Connor v. Pittsburgh

• Decision Date: 24 November 1851
• Citation: 18 Pa. 187
• Parties: O'Connor <I>versus</I> Pittsburgh.
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

18 Pa. 187

O'ConnorversusPittsburgh.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

November 24, 1851.

ERROR to the District Court of Allegheny county.

The case was argued by McCandless and Loomis, for the plaintiff in error.

Kuhn, for the city.

The opinion of the Court, filed November 24, 1851, was delivered by GIBSON, C. J.

We have had this cause reargued in order to discover, if possible, some way to relieve the plaintiff consistently with law; but I grieve to say we have discovered none.To the Commonwealth here, as to the king in England, belongs the franchise of every highway as a trustee for the public; and streets regulated and repaired by the authority of a municipal corporation, are as much highways as are rivers, railroads, canals, or public roads laid out by the authority of the quarter sessions.In England a public road is called the king's highway; and though it is not usually called the Commonwealth's highway here, it is so in contemplation of law, for it exists only by force of the Commonwealth's authority.Every railroad, canal, turnpike, or bridge company, has its franchise by grant from the state, and consequently with its original qualities and immunities adhering to it.Every highway, toll or free, is licensed, constructed, and regulated by the immediate or delegated action of the sovereign power; and in every Commonwealth the people in the aggregate constitute the sovereign.But it is the prerogative of a sovereign to be exempt from coercion by action; for jurisdiction implies superiority, and a sovereign can have no superior.At the declaration of American independence, prerogatives which did not concern the person, state, and dignity of the king, but such as had...