Shell v. Poulson

Citations

• 23 Wash. 535
• 63 P. 204
• 1900 Wash. LEXIS 385

Syllabus

<p>HIGHWAYS-ESTABLISHMENT BY LEGAL PROCEEDINGS-SUFFICIENCY OF PETITION.</p> <p>County commissioners cannot acquire jurisdiction for the establishment of a road, upon a petition which is not sufficiently definite to apprise a surveyor of the location of the proposed road, nor give notice to the land owner of the attempt to subject his land to a public easement..</p> <p>SAME — DEDICATION.</p> <p>The fact that the owner of land permitted without objection its use as a highway by those having occasion to so use it would not show a dedication, in the absence of an intention to dedicate the land to public use.</p> <p>SAME-PRESCRIPTION — INTERRUPTION BY LAND OWNER.</p> <p>Where the owner of land erects and closes gates, though not keeping them locked, across a road through his premises used by the public, before the acquisition of a prescriptive right by the public to such road, such act is an assertion by the owner that its uninterrupted use as a highway is denied to the public, and such interruption in its general, continuous, adverse and exclusive use by the public destroys any prescriptive rights that may have begun to accrue.</p> <p>SAME-LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AS BASIS OE PRESCRIPTIVE RIGHT-DEVIATION.</p> <p>A prescriptive right to a public road cannot be founded on an attempt to establish the road by legal proceedings, when the road as surveyed for that purpose runs from 250 to 400 feet distant from the traveled road.</p>