Teasdale v. Newell & Snowling Const. Co.

• Decision Date: 21 June 1906
• Citation: 192 Mass. 440,78 N.E. 504
• Parties: TEASDALE et al. v. NEWELL & SNOWLING CONST. CO.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

192 Mass. 440

78 N.E. 504

TEASDALE et al. v. NEWELL & SNOWLING CONST. CO.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Norfolk.

June 21, 1906

COUNSEL

A. E. Pillsbury and G. E. Adams, for appellants.

Gargan Keating & Brackett, for appellee.

OPINION

HAMMOND J.

Inasmuch as the ground on which the bill was dismissed is not mentioned, the plaintiffs have the burnden of maintaining that upon the facts which appear they have a right to a decree in their favor. Donovan v. McCarty, 155 Mass 543, 30 N.E. 221. Moreover, since the evidence at the hearing was substantially all oral, the findings of the trial court will not be distrubed unless plainly wrong. Dickinson v Todd, 172 Mass. 183, 51 N.E. 976.

We have examined the evidence, and in view of the locality of the work, the number of horses employed, the attempts made by the respondent to secure stable room, the action of the board of health upon the petition made to them and the apparent attitude of the board upon the whole question of stable room, the propriety of doing the work with horses and the saving thus made in expense when compared with other methods of doing the work, a reasonable and proper view which the trial court could have taken of the evidence was that the method adopted and carried out to procure stable room was reasonably necessary for the prosecution of the work. At least such a view of the evidence could not be set aside as clearly wrong, and it is to be presumed in support of the decree that the trial court took that view. In the same manner it is to be presumed that the park commissioners considered it reasonably necessary that the stable should be erected upon the park land during the work to be done under the contract, and that under a vote of the board it was erected upon a spot selected by the engineer, and that this act is sanctioned by the commissioners.

Here then is a case where the commissioners have made a contract for the proper preparation of land taken for park purposes, and it is reasonably necessary to the performance of that contract that a stable should be placed temporarily upon the unfinished park, and such a stable has been erected under a vote of the commissioners and by their sanction.

Rev Laws, c. 102, § 69, reads thus: 'No person shall erect, occupy or use for a stable any building in the city whose population exceeds twenty-five thousand unless such use is licensed by the board of health of said...