State ex rel. James v. County Commissioners

Citations

• 83 Md. 377
• 35 A. 62
• 1896 Md. LEXIS 74

Syllabus

<p>Highways—Liabilities of Coimty Commissioners for Non- Repair— Acceptance of Way Acquired by Prescription or Dedication— Public Use of Footway on Private Property—Negligence—Instructions to the fury—Demurrer to the Evidence—Time of Signing Bill of Exceptions.</p> <p>While the public may, as against the owner of the soil, acquire by prescription a right of way, there must be an acceptance by the county in order to make such way a thoroughfare that the public authorities are bound to keep in repair.</p> <p>Such acceptance may be proved when express by the record, or it ■ may be implied from repairs made or knowingly paid for by the authority which has the legal power to adopt the highway or from long user by the public.</p> <p>Where there is no obligation on the part of County Commissioners to keep a way in repair, there is no negligence in a failure to repair.</p> <p>The mere fact that th% public have for many years used a footway over private property as a short cut from one point on a public road to another, is not sufficient to authorize the presumption that the same has been accepted by the public authorities as a public way so as to impose upon them the duty of keeping such footway in repair.</p> <p>Where the public, in order to make a short cut between two points of a curve in a county road, have been accustomed for many years to walk on the surface of a mill-dam and bn planks over the waste-gates, the same being private property which had not been accepted as a way by the county, the Commissioners are not bound to keep the dam and planks in proper repair as a public road, and they are not liable in an action for the death of a person who, while crossing the waste-gates, fell into the water and was drowned at a point fifty yards distant from the public highway.</p> <p>An instruction to the jury that there is no evidence in the case legally sufficient to entitle the plaintiff to recover and that the verdict must be for the defendant, is in the nature of a demu