Fitts v. Pierce County

Citations

• 78 Wash. 238
• 138 P. 885
• 1914 Wash. LEXIS 1005

Syllabus

<p>Highways — Establishment—Prescription—Evidence—Sufficiency. A county highway is not established by prescription, where it appears that, after the platting of property across which an old road had been used for many years by sufferance, the county commissioners, in 1891, vacated all the streets in the plat, which included the old road, after which part of the old road was used by permission for access to a cemetery until 1909, to the north and south of which the old road had been fenced for many years in many places without objection; the vacation by the county commissioners being a disclaimer of public rights.</p> <p>Same — Establishment — Use — Public Work — “Lawful Road.” A “lawful road” by use for seven years if “worked and kept up at public expense,” as provided by Rem. & Bal. Code, § 5657, is not established by the making of slight repairs to a plank bridge over a small creek as an accommodation to people using a cemetery, at an expense of $3.50, under an order reciting that it was not a county road, which was the only work done for the last fourteen years, although previous thereto some slight repairs were made one year at public expense, especially in view of the county’s disclaimer of public right by vacation of a plat twenty-two years previously.</p>