Dennis v. Osborn

Citations

• 75 Kan. 557
• 89 P. 925
• 1907 Kan. LEXIS 101

Syllabus

<p>SYLLABUS BY THE COURT.</p> <p>1. Highways — Maintenance—Powers of a Road-overseer. A road-overseer is vested with a broad discretion as to the plan and methods of maintaining highways, and it is competent for him to grade a highway and place a culvert across it so that surface-water which comes upon the highway will pass off the same by the usual and natural course.</p> <p>2. -Improvements — Injunction. . An error in judgment by the road-overseer with respect to the plan of improving a highway, adopted in good faith, will not of itself give a ground for enjoining the improvements.</p> <p>3. -- Reasonableness of Official Conduct — Rights of Private Owner. The officers must act with reason and prudence in making such improvements, and cannot collect a considerable quantity of water and unnecessarily and unreasonably throw it in a body upon the land of a private owner to his injury. But held, that the testimony in this case does not show that the proposed improvement will cast the water upon plaintiff’s land in such a manner as to give him a right, to maintain injunction.</p>