Home/Illinois Supreme Court/Cooney v. Town of Hartland

Cooney v. Town of Hartland

95 Ill. 516, 1880 Ill. LEXIS 206
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
DecidedJune 16, 1880
StatusPublished
Cited by22 cases

This text of 95 Ill. 516 (Cooney v. Town of Hartland) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Illinois Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cooney v. Town of Hartland, 95 Ill. 516, 1880 Ill. LEXIS 206 (Ill. 1880).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Dickey

delivered the opinion of the Court:

This is an action by appellants against the town, seeking damages for injury to the lands of appellants, alleged to have been caused by the unlawful conduct of the highway commissioners of the town in diverting (in the construction or improvement of a public highway) from its natural course a stream of water, whereby it was caused to flow upon the lands of appellants.

It is insisted by appellants that a distinction should be taken in such cases between acts of omission and acts of commission; that in the case of Town of Waltham v. Kemper, 55 Ill. 348, this court passed only upon a case of a neglect to perform an affirmative act, and while holding that such corporations are not liable for a failure to repair a bridge, the court did not hold that towns are not responsible for affirmative acts of tort done in its behalf by its officers.

The suggestion is plausible rather than substantial. The town may construct a road lawfully by its commissioners of highways, but if the commissioners seize private property without lawful right, or injure the same unlawfully, the tort is that of the man or men who do the unlawful act, whether they be public officers or not, and can not be regarded properly as the act of such a corporation.

The judgment in this case must be affirmed.

Judgment affirmed.

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Bluebook (online)
95 Ill. 516, 1880 Ill. LEXIS 206, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cooney-v-town-of-hartland-ill-1880.