State ex rel. James v. County Commissioners

McSherry, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The declaration in this case alleges in substance and effect that one of the public roads in Kent County, to-wit, the public road which leads from Lankford to Rock Hall was, by the wrongful act, neglect and default of the County Commissioners, suffered to be out of repair and unmended so as to be impassable with safety ; and that Lee James, the husband of Hannah James and the father of Lee and Isaac James, the equitable plaintiffs, in travelling on and over the said road and using due care,, fell into the mill-pond which adjoins said public road and was drowned in consequence of the wrongful neglect of the defendant in not keeping said public road in safe and proper condition. Upon the conclusion of the plaintiff’s evidence the Court, at the instance of the defendant, granted an instruction which withdrew the case from the jury, and from the judgment subsequently entered against the plaintiff this appeal was taken. The granting of this instruction is the ruling complained of in the first exception.

The evidence shows that in the public road alluded to there is, between Price’s or Connelly’s Mill and Saint Paul’s Church, a considerable bend or curve, which for brevity of description may be likened to the segment of a circle; that opposite to and distant some fifty or sixty yards, at the farthest point, from the concavity of this curve, there was a mill-dam belonging to and being the property of the owner of the mill, and extending from the mill at one end of the curve to or nearly to a fence surrounding the churchyard at the other end of the curve. This dam and a footpath connecting with it on the church side of the dam, may be considered the chord of the above-mentioned curve or arc. In the breast of this dam there were automatic waste-gates which worked in frames made of timber, and across the sills forming the tops of these frames loose planks were laid for the convenience of the mill employees when removing brush and other debris as it accumulated and obstructed the free play of the gates. It further appears that ³⁸⁰ a prong of Lankford bay extends across the curve in the public road, and that as the tide rises this portion of the road becomes, because inundated, more or less difficult to traverse by persons on foot. .

In consequence of this and to avoid crossing this prong of the bay, it had been the habit of persons in the neighborhood, for upwards of fifty years past, to leave the public road at the mill on the one side, or near the church on the other side, and to walk on the surface of the dam and on the loose planks over the waste-gates and thus to pass, by a short cut, from one point in the public road to another point in thé same road without going around the curve. About dusk on the evening of January the twentieth, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, Lee James, the husband and father of the equitable plaintiffs, left the vicinity of the church and started for his home on the mill side of the dam. Instead of walking around the curve in the county road he took the shorter cut across the breast of the dam. In an hour afterwards his dead body was found in the dam at the waste-gates, a point distant at least fifty yards from the public highway.

One of the sills showed traces of a footprint, and it seems probable that the deceased slipped as he stepped upon the sill and that he then fell into the water and was drowned-. This action was brought to recover damages for the death thus occasioned. It is perfectly obvious that if the place where the accident happened was not a public thoroughfare, or part of a public thoroughfare, which the County Commissioners were under a legal obligation to keep in repair, its disrepair furnishes no evidence of negligence for which the county was amenable. This proposition is so self-evident that its statement is its demonstration.

Now, confessedly the man met his death not in the known and established public highway, but upon private property belonging to an individual and located at least fifty yards distant from the county road. To avoid the inevitable result of such a situation—the certain defeat of plaintiff’s claim against the county—it was ³⁸¹ insisted that the long-continued user of the mill-dam by the public in the manner hereinbefore stated converted the mill-dam into a public highway; and as a corollary, that the County Commissioners were legally bound to keep the dam and the planks across the waste-gates in proper repair as a public road or thoroughfare; and that their failure and conceded omission to do this was actionable negligence for which they were liable in the pending action. There is no doubt that an owner of land may dedicate it to the public for a highway, but an intent on the part of the owner to do so is absolutely necessary, and unless such intention is clearly proved by the facts and circumstances of the particular case, no dedication exists. McCormick v. Mayor, &c., Balto., 45 Md. 512 .

There is no pretence that there was such a dedication in the case at bar. But a public way may also be proved either by a copy of the record or other documentary evidence of the laying out of the same by the proper authorities pursuant to statute, or by evidence of immemorial usage. Day v. Allender, 22 Md. 511 . It is upon an alleged prescriptive right that reliance is placed.

Whilst the public may as against the owner of the soil acquire by prescription a right of way, something more is needed to make the way, so acquired, a thoroughfare that the public authorities are bound to keep in repair. There must be not only a dedication or a right acquired by prescription, but there must be also an acceptance before the road becomes a public road that the County Commissioners are obliged to maintain. Where there is no obligation to keep a way in repair there is no negligence in a failure to repair ; and where there is no negligence there is, of course, no liability.