The City of Chicago v. Laflin
| Decision Date | 30 September 1868 |
| Citation | 1868 WL 5199,49 Ill. 172 |
| Parties | THE CITY OF CHICAGOv.MATTHEW LAFLIN et al. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
APPEAL from the Superior Court of Chicago.
The opinion states the case.
Mr. S. A. IRVIN, for the appellant.
Mr. A. W. ARRINGTON and Messrs. DENT & BLACK, for the appellees.
Appellees were the owners of a wharf on the Chicago river, on lots owned by them, and were about to commence repairs on it in the spring of 1867, when the city filed a bill to restrain and prevent their making such repairs, and to have them declared a nuisance. Appellees filed an answer, denying the allegations of the bill; setting up that they were the owners of the lots in fee, in front of which they were building wharfs or docks which are the obstructions of which the city complains. That they paid more for the lots because they had wharfage privileges; that the river was shoal water and they only placed the wharfs so far in the river as was necessary to enable vessels to approach them; that the wharfs were first built in 1840, and they have respectively a right to maintain them; that they were only in the act of repairing or rebuilding them when enjoined; that they had used them since 1840, and insist that there is a complete remedy at law, and set up the statute of limitations. On the hearing in the court below, a decree was rendered dissolving the injunction and dismissing the bill, and the case is brought to this court on appeal.
It appears that the Secretary of War laid out and platted the Fort Dearborn reservation for the United States, into an addition to the city of Chicago, on the seventh day of June, 1839. The plat was acknowledged and recorded. The lots were sold by the government and patents were issued to the purchasers, and appellees derive title from that sale, and by stipulation it is agreed that they are the owners of the lots upon which the wharfs are situated.
In the explanation of the plat, the Secretary of War says:
“The width of the rear of the water lots bounded on the Chicago river, is determined and established by posts set at the intersection of the lines of the lots and streets with meanders of the river, as shown by the notes entered upon the meandered lines.”
It appears from the evidence that these wharves were erected as early as in 1840 and 1841, and have been used and maintained by the respective owners ever since. It also satisfactorily appears that these docks did not cause any obstruction to the navigation of the river until the city built the Rush street bridge, and dredged the river, since which time, the navigation has not at that point been as convenient as it was previously. These facts, then, present the question, whether appellees are riparian owners of these lots, and as such, had the right to erect and maintain such wharfs, and the further question, whether the city by its own acts, in the erection of the bridge and dredging the river, rendered the wharfs which were previously innoxious, a nuisance.
In the case of Middleton v. Pritchard, 3 Scam. 570, this court held that the owner of land bounded by a stream not navigable in the technical sense of the term, held the land to the center of the thread of the stream, and that the water and soil under it, were exclusively that of the riparian owner to that point, and it was also held that the Mississippi river was not a navigable stream in a legal sense, and that this right was subject to the public easement of passing over the stream. That a grant to any individual bounded by such a stream, carried the ownership to its center current, by the rules of the common law.
In the case of The People v. The City of St. Louis, 5 Gilm. 351, it was held that the several States...
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