Eddy v. Inhabitants of City of Plainfield

• Decision Date: 29 February 1928
• Docket Number: No. 248.,248.
• Parties: EDDY v. INHABITANTS OF CITY OF PLAINFIELD.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

140 A. 668

EDDY

v. INHABITANTS OF CITY OF PLAINFIELD.

No. 248.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Feb. 29, 1928.

Certiorari by Charles B. Eddy against the Inhabitants of the City of Plainfield to review an ordinance. Ordinance sustained, and writ dismissed.

Argued October term, 1927, before TRENCHARD, KALISCH, and KATZENBACH, JJ.

Arthur Lovell, of Plainfield, for prosecutor.

Charles A. Reed, of Plainfield, for the respondent.

PER CURIAM. This case is before this court upon a writ of certiorari. The writ was allowed to review an ordinance of the city of Plainfield accepting a street or road being a continuation of Stelle avenue and running from Plainfield avenue on the east to Grant avenue on the west. The ordinance was adopted on April 18, 1927. The prosecutor challenges the ordinance upon the ground that some of the land over which the street runs has never been dedicated to public use. The reasons and briefs do not raise the question as to whether certiorari is the proper procedure to raise the issue which we are asked to decide. We therefore will not pass upon this question.

The street referred to in the ordinance is some 2,200 feet long. This makes the frontage on both sides 4,400 feet. The prosecutor owns 400 feet of frontage, 200 feet on each side of the street. His lots, corner lots, are located at the Grant avenue end of the street. He claims the 400 feet of the alleged street abutting on his property was never dedicated to public use. The respondent contends that every foot of land in the street accepted by the ordinance was dedicated. This dedication, it claims, is evidenced by: (1) Maps placed on file by the owners showing the street; (2) by sales of land from these maps and reference in the deeds in the description of the lands sold to the street; and (3) by the actual opening and laying out of said street with the consent of abutting landowners. The street is first mentioned in a deed dated July 11, 1872, made by James Leonard to Edwin M. Daniel. This deed establishing a new line between the parties thereto parallel with the center line of Eighth street, 400 feet therefrom and extending 1 307.5 feet westerly from Plainfield avenue towards Grant avenue. In this deed is contained the following:

"Said last mentioned boundary line being the center line of a proposed new street to be laid out and opened sixty feet in width and designated by the parties hereto as Ninth street."

In 1874 a map was filed by the owners of the land in the office of the register of deeds for Union county. This map was entitled: "Map of Choice Villa Sites and Building Plots Situated in the City of Plainfield, N. J., No. 1." On this map is shown a street designated as Ninth street. The center line of the street as shown on the map substantially follows the division line between the properties of Leonard and Daniel as established by the deed between these parties dated July 11, 1872. James Leonard, Edwin M. Daniel, and Isaac W. Rushmore were the owners of the fee of the street. It appears that in every deed made by these parties or their grantees after the map was filed reference is made to the street and the existence thereof recognized.

Prior to the year 1910 Ninth street had never been marked out on the ground. It had been acknowledged to be a street in contracts made in 1894 by Rushmore with parties by the names of Barrows and Pinto and by the deeds given to execute the contracts. In 1919 the Central Holding...