Thaxter v. Turner

• Decision Date: 23 July 1892
• Parties: THAXTER v. TURNER.
• Court: Rhode Island Supreme Court

24 A. 829

17 R.I. 799

THAXTER

v. TURNER.

Supreme Court of Rhode Island.

July 23, 1892.

Bill by Eben C. Thaxter against Francis S. Turner. On demurrer to the bill. Demurrer overruled.

Dexter B. Potter, for complainant.

Francis Colwell and Walter H. Barney, for respondent.

PER CURIAM. This bill is brought to compel the respondent to remove the obstructions which he has placed in certain platted streets and a platted park, which streets and park are delineated on a plat called "Oak Lawn Plat, Cranston, R. I., belonging to R. B. Holden, George A. Angell, E. R. Holden, and R. H. Blanding, surveyed and drawn March, 1873, by J. A. Latham," which plat is duly recorded in the office of the town clerk of said Cranston. The tract of land delineated on said plat is divided thereon into house lots, streets, and a park, for the purpose of selling said house lots. The respondent is the owner of said tract of land, excepting such house lots as have been sold thereon. The complainant is the owner by purchase from the respondent of two of said lots, upon which his homestead is located, the deeds whereof describe said lots as numbered 152 and 153, as laid out and delineated on said plat, reference thereto being made. The bill does not specify what streets upon said plat are obstructed, nor the particular manner in which the complainant suffers injury thereby. The respondent has demurred to the bill, on the grounds that it does not set forth a cause of action sufficient to warrant the interposition of a court of equity; that it does not set out sufficient cause to warrant the granting of the relief therein prayed for; and because the complainant has an adequate remedy at law. We are of the opinion that the bill, although somewhat meager in its allegations, as to the particular manner in which the injury complained of was sustained, yet states a case which entitles the complainant to the interposition of a court of equity. The law seems to be well settled, where the owner of land divides it into house lots, streets, and public places, for the purposes of sale, by having the same platted, and recording the plat in the office of the recorder of deeds, and then sells one or more of said lots, describing the same by a reference to said plat, that he thereby annexes to each lot sold a right of way in the platted streets delineated on said plat, which neither he nor his successors can afterwards interrupt or control. In Elliott, Roads & S. pp. 112,113, this principle is...