Inhabitants of New Salem v. Eagle Mill Co.

• Court: Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
• Writing for the Court: Holmes, J.
• Citation: Inhabitants of New Salem v. Eagle Mill Co., 138 Mass. 8 (Mass. 1884)
• Decision Date: 25 October 1884
• Parties: Inhabitants of New Salem v. Eagle Mill Company

138 Mass. 8

Inhabitants of New Salem v. Eagle Mill Company

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts

October 25, 1884

Argued September 17, 1884.

Franklin.

Tort for damages alleged to have been caused to a highway in the plaintiff town, by water set back upon the same by a dam built by one Eddy, and maintained by the defendant corporation. Writ dated October 26, 1883. At the trial in the Superior Court, before Pitman, J., the jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff; and the defendant alleged exceptions, which appear in the opinion.

Exceptions overruled.

S. T Field, for the defendant.

S. D Conant, (C. C. Conant with him,) for the plaintiff.

C. Allen & Colburn, JJ., absent. Holmes, J.

OPINION

Holmes, J.

1. There was evidence from which the jury might have found that the defendant, in 1871, rebuilt the dam originally built by one Eddy, in 1855. If it did so, it was liable without a demand; McDonough v. Gilman, 3 Allen 264; and might continue liable, notwithstanding a subsequent lease to or occupation by others, especially if, as the plaintiff contended, the lease was merely colorable. Prentiss v. Wood, 132 Mass. 486. McDonough v. Gilman, 3 Allen 267. Roswell v. Prior, 12 Mod. 635.

2. The arrangement between the town and Eddy, under which the original dam was built, was not shown to be sufficient to bar the plaintiff of this action. In the first place, so far as appears, all that the town did was to accept a bond "to clear the town from any damage from the flowing of the water, that the dam never should interfere with the town road." Construing this as a contract that the dam should not constitute a nuisance, rather than as an agreement to indemnify the town for acquiescing in a nuisance which it had no power to license, as against third persons at least, ( Stetson v. Faxon, 19 Pick. 147, 154,) it is a little hard to see how merely accepting a bond in that form could have prevented the town from suing even Eddy, if the dam did interfere with the road, and thus did constitute a nuisance.

But, further, there was no agreement by the town in writing, and no express agreement at all. The most that could be implied from the acceptance of Eddy's bond was a license, so far as the plaintiff was concerned, to build the dam as constructed. Such a supposed license could not be taken to extend to a subsequent rebuilding of the dam by a stranger to the bond. Still less could it be taken to extend to a rebuilding to a greater height, which there was evidence tending to show. It is unnecessary, therefore, to consider whether it would have affected the plaintiff's right if it had gone further.

3. The court ruled "that no prescriptive right can be maintained to create a [public] nuisance, or to bar the right of action by the plaintiff town." It may be doubtful whether we are called upon to deal with this ruling, in view of the fact that Eddy maintained the dam until within twenty years of action brought, and that seemingly he did not maintain it under a claim of right adverse to all the world but, as has been seen, under what he probably supposed to be a sufficient license from the town. But, if the question is open, we think that the ruling must be sustained upon the authorities. It is true that in Cutter v. Cambridge, 6 Allen 20, it was decided that the statutes specially regulating that subject "recognize as an existing rule of law, that fences, maintained under a claim of right for forty years within the limits of the highway, give to the owner an absolute right to continue them there as against the public." And some of the reasoning of the opinion might seem to lead to conclusions of more general scope. But we do not read that case as intended to overrule the then recent decisions that a public nuisance was not legalized by being maintained for twenty years. Commonwealth v. Upton, 6 Gray 473. Morton v. Moore, 15 Gray 573. We have not been asked to overrule them, and we assume that they are still law. It is also true, that it is decided that a...