Waring v. Cheraw & Darlington Railroad

Citations

• 16 S.C. 416
• 1882 S.C. LEXIS 13

Syllabus

<p>1. The charter of a railroad company provided that, in the absence of contract, it should be presumed that the land on which the road was built had been granted to the company unless the owners of the land made application for an assessment of damages within ten years thereafter, saving the rights of femes covert and infants until two years after the removal of their disabilities. The company, in 1854, constructed its road on land , which had been devised to a feme covert executrix and her heirs in trust for her married sister for life, and after her death “ to the issue which she : may leave living at the time of her death.” The executrix and her husband qualified in 1850; the husband died in 1869, and the executrix still survives as his widow. The married sister died in 1880, and soon thereafter her surviving issue brought action against the railroad company to recover compensation for the land so appropriated. Held, that the legal estate being in the executrix and her husband for more than two years after the road was built, and then in the executrix, as trustee, for more than two years after she became discovert, with contingent remainders to the children, the action was barred by the terms of the charter.</p> <p>2. The word “ hereinafter,” in the seventeenth section of the charter of the Wilmington & Manchester Railroad Company (11 Stat. 408), was intended for hereinbefore, and must be so construed; the manifest intention of a statute will control the use of an inappropriate and senseless word.</p> <p>3. A motion for new trial will not be granted on the ground of newlv-discovered evidence, where such evidence could not avail the moving party.</p> <p>4. Proceedings to obtain compensation for right of way, instituted in 1859, and then suspended, without assessment made, cannot operate to prevent the bar of the Statute of Limitations from running against such claim, or from defeating action brought eleven years afterwards for the same purpose, unless a continua