Harding & Loftin v. Jasper

Citations

• 14 Cal. 642

Syllabus

<p>To constitute a dedication of land for the purposes of a rural highway, no particular formality is necessary. The intention on the part of the owner to so dedicate, is the vital question.</p> <p>This intention may be manifested, with or without writing, by any act of the owner, as throwing open his land to public travel, platting it and selling lots bounded by streets designated on the plat, or acquiescence in the use of land as a highway; and, hence, time is not an essential ingredient in the act of dedica/tion.</p> <p>Time, though often a material ingredient in the evidence, is not an indispensable ingredient in the act of dedication. If the soil be accepted and used by the public in the manner intended by the owner, the dedication is'complete—preeluding the owner and all claiming in his right, from asserting any ownership inconsistent with such use.</p> <p>Dedication is a conclusion of fact to be drawn by the jury from the circumstances of each case. And the quantum and kind of evidence of the intention to dedicate depend somewhat on the peculiar circumstances of the country.</p> <p>The authorities on this question stated and commented on.</p> <p>Stronger proof of dedication is required in cases of roads in the country than in cases of streets or lands in a town or city.</p> <p>Where a portion of land claimed under a Mexican grant, being uninclosed and waste, has been used as a road for public travel for a series of years, pending proceedings by the claimant for confirmation of his grant, the land being for the most part in the actual occupation of settlers, and the claimant being aware that the land was so used, and not objecting to it; held, that this does not constl. tute a dedication of the land used as a road to public use; that, the land being in litigation between the government and claimant, both as to the right and the boundaries, the claimant had a right to wait, under the statute, until after a patent issued, without prejudice to his right of action