Chaison v. Wehrt

Citations

• 104 La. 487

Syllabus

<p>Syllabus.</p> <p>Primarily, all municipalities have charge and control of the banks of navigable streams withiD their limits. When a third person claims a right to those banks, growing out of the fact that he is owner of riparian property, or out of the fact that some one who acts under an authority granted by the municipal corporation infringes upon his rights as owner of property adjacent to the riparian property, he should bring suit against the municipal corporation and make it the principal defendant. The right which the public has, or may have, to the use of the property cannot be affected in any manner unless the representative of the public, the municipality, ismade a party to the suit and the issues decided contradictorily with it. To determine any question growing out of such issues against a private individual who disclaims any right and who, in reality, has none except those he has exercised as owner of a ferry boat and under a resolution of the corporation, would he doing a vain thing.</p>