Baldwin v. Trimble

Citations

• 85 Md. 396
• 36 L.R.A. 489
• 37 A. 176
• 1897 Md. LEXIS 62

Syllabus

<p>Highways and Streets — Abandonment of Highway by the Public— Equitable Estoppel to Assert Right to Abandoned Highway— Specific Performance — Marketable Title — Encroachment on - Highways — Mortgage or Deed of. Trust Barred by Limitations —Adverse Possession.</p> <p>While an encroachment on a highway is a public nuisance which can never grow by prescription into a private right, yet there are cases where, when the use of a highway has been totally abandoned by the public and private rights have grown up in consequence of such abandonment, an equitable estoppel is created against the public to assert a right to the use of the highway.</p> <p>The right of a municipality to take possession of land dedicated to the public for use as a highway cannot be barred by the possession of such land by an individual, under a claim of right, for the period of the Statute of Limitations where there has been no abandonment by the publie.</p> <p>Two deeds conveying a tract of land across which a road ran granted the road itself as follows : “Including such part of said L. road as may lie between said parcels of ground whenever O. street is opened for travel and L. road is closed.” O. street has been opened and graded, and for more than twenty-five years the L. road has been disused and abandoned as a highway and closed by buildings constructed across it, although not formally discontinued by the municipal authorities. There was no evidence that the road was ever laid out by such authorities, or that it was accepted and kept in repair by them. Upon a bill for the specific performance of a contract by the defendant to purchase the property, it was objected that the plaintiff under said deeds acquired no title to the L. road. Held,</p> <p>ist. That the deeds conveyed all the estate grantors had in the bed of the road, subject to the easement of the public so long as the road remained opened, and upon the cessation of that easement from any cause the title of the grantee to the bed of