Larue v. Oil City Street Passenger Railway Co.

Citations

• 170 Pa. 249
• 37 W.N.C. 133
• 32 A. 977
• 1895 Pa. LEXIS 1394

Syllabus

<p>Bridges — County bridges — Duty of county.</p> <p>Where a county purchases a bridge from a municipality it becomes liable for the safety of the bridge as a part of the public highway, and it is clothed with all powers necessary to enable it to regulate the public use of the bridge so far as its own protection and the safety of those using it may require, but it is bound to keep it open, and in good repair, and cannot close it against the public as an owner might close his house.</p> <p>Street railways — Bridges—Municipal consent — Exclusion of public.</p> <p>A street railway company which has received the consent of the local authorities to construct its tracks upon a bridge, has no right to exclude the public from the use of the bridge which forms a link in the street or highway on which it is erected, or to so use the bridge as to render it unsafe for public travel.</p> <p>If the bridge is either of insufficient strength, or of insufficient capacity to accommodate the general public travel, and also the street railway company’s cars, and cannot be so strengthened or enlarged as to do so, the local authorities are not bound to provide the street railway company with a suitable viaduct or other means of crossing the stream at the point where the bridge is situated.</p> <p>Street Railways — Bridges—Equity—Injunction.</p> <p>On a bill in equity to restrain a street railway company from laying its-tracks upon a county bridge, where the evidence tends to show that, unless the bridge is materially strengthened and enlarged, it will be neither safe, nor of sufficient capacity to accommodate both the general travel of the-public and the street railway, a preliminary injunction which has been granted to restrain the use of it by the company will be continued.</p> <p>If the county authorities arbitrarily refuse their consent to the use of a county bridge in a city by a street railway company, on the ground that the bridge will be rendered unsafe for public use, the court