Heagy v. Black

90 Ind. 534
CourtIndiana Supreme Court
DecidedMay 15, 1883
DocketNo. 9304
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 90 Ind. 534 (Heagy v. Black) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Indiana Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Heagy v. Black, 90 Ind. 534 (Ind. 1883).

Opinion

Black, C.

— The appellant was the defendant, and Noah . Black and John Trump were the plaintiffs, in a suit to enjoin the defendant, a road supervisor, from removing fences and •opening a highway over certain lands of the plaintiffs in Kosciusko county.

A restraining .order was granted in vacation until the third •day of the next term. On the first day of that term, the defendant moved to dissolve the restraining order and to dismiss the cause. On the next day, the court overruled the motion, and thereupon the defendant demurred to the complaint for want of sufficient facts. The demurrer was overruled, and further proceedings, which need not be specially mentioned, resulted in a perpetual, injunction, and the defendant appealed.

[536]*536Since the cause was submitted in this court, said Noah Black has died, and said John Trump has been appointed administrator of his estate, and as such has been substituted as-an appellee for said Noah Black, deceased. One of the assignments of error questions the action of the court “ in overruling the appellant’s motion to dissolve the temporary injunction and dismiss the cause.”

There can be no available error in refusing to dissolve an interlocutory injunction upon an appeal from a final judgment for a perpetual injunction.' Board of Comm’rs v. Markle, 46 Ind. 96. But the ruling upon this motion could not be reviewed, for the reason that the grounds of the motion are not shown by bill of exceptions.

Of the other specifications in the assignment of errors, we need only notice that by which it is assigned that the court erred in overruling the demurrer to the complaint.

The complaint showed that the plaintiff Noah Black was. the owner in fee simple of the southwest quarter of section 25, township 32, range 7 east, in said county, and that theappellee John Trump was the owner in fee simple of the northwest quarter of the same section, except sixty acres off the north side thereof; that on the 10th of March, 1879, one-Alfred Hoover and others filed their petition before the board of commissioners of said county, asking for the location of a public highway on the section line between section 25 and section 26 in said township, and the vacation of' an old road running in the same general direction; that the plaintiffs did not join in said petition, and never consented that the proposed highway might be established and run through their lands or the land of either of them or their enclosures. It was alleged that the board of commissioners appointed viewers, who reported that in their opinion the public would not be in anyway injured by said proposed change; that the-board ordered that said change and vacation be granted as set forth in the report of the viewers, and that said road should be vacated when the new road should be made as good and. [537]*537passable as the old road, by the petitioners, to the acceptance of the proper township trustee; that the defendant was pretending to act as a supervisor in said county, and was threatening to throw down the enclosure and fence of the plaintiff Black, commencing at the southwest corner of his said land, and to open and cut a new road through his said enclosure, running a little diagonally to the present line and road and encroaching on his enclosure all the length of said line, until at the northwest corner of his said land it should be about four rods from the present line; that by so throwing down his fence his enclosures, containing growing wheat and ungathered corn, and his pasture land would be exposed to the common; that the appellant was threatening to make and open a road along said lino, to make which it would be necessary to dig up and excavate the earth along the route to the depth of eight or ten feet at places, and he would destroy certain bearing fruit trees, planted and cultivated for said Black’s orchard, and certain shade and ornamental trees, particularly described, in said Black’s front yard; that said farm was improved, and the houses and buildings were built with reference to the old road, which had been located for about thirty-five years; that the proposed road would run within six or eight feet from the front door of plaintiff Black’s dwelling-house, and would destroy his milk and spring-house and his well; that said road would throw open and expose to the common the orchard and pasture of the plaintiff Trump, his clover field and his field of growing wheat; that eighty rods of his fences would be torn down and destroyed, and his certain bearing fruit trees would be destroyed; that to construct said road there would have to be great digging up of the ground and excavating the earth, in places along said road, about six feet, and filling it in at other places to great depth; all of which acts the appellant was threatening to do and would begin to do, as the supervisor of roads of'said township, with a large force of hands and teams, on the next Thursday. It was alleged that the proposed road would not run on the line di[538]*538viding the lands of the parties,” biit the old road ran on that line; that the appellant had no authority of law to open said road; that the viewers did not report, and said board did not find, in any form, that said proposed highway was or would be of public utility; that said board never ordered said road opened; that it will be seen from reading the record of said board in said matter that no notice was given, as provided by law, of the application for such change and vacation, and therefore the board had no jurisdiction to appoint viewers; that the petition does not set out the full names of all the parties and owners of the lands through which said change would pass; that said road would run through the enclosures of the' plaintiffs of more than one year’s standing; that the plaintiffs were first informed of the intention of the appellant to throw down their fences and4 expose their crops and enclosures to the commons, and to excavate and make said proposed-road, “yesterday”; that he had notified the hands in his district, as the supervisor thereof, to appear on said ground on the next Thursday, for the purpose of opening said road, .and that if he were not restrained he would proceed, etc.

There is obscurity as to the purpose of the pleader in some portions of the complaint. While it is not alleged that the defendant was about to open the new highway upon a line other than that proposed in the petition for its location and •designated in the report of the viewers, which coincides with the west line of the lands of the plaintiffs, as described in the complaint, it is stated, in substance, that a portion of said lands would lie west of the new road, which would not run on the line dividing the lands of the “parties,” the pleader probably meaning thereby the plaintiffs and the own- ». ers of lands lying immediately adjoining those of the plaintiffs on the west. There seems to have been an intention to raise a controversy about the true location of the section line.

The complaint does not show a joint or common interest of the plaintiffs in the lands' mentioned, but shows that each owned a distinct portion thereof in severalty.

[539]*539If the proceedings before the board of commissioners were not void, the defendant could not be enjoined at the suit of either or both of the plaintiffs, from doing such damaging acts as were mentioned in the complaint in the opening of the highway upon the line established by said proceedings.

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Bluebook (online)
90 Ind. 534, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/heagy-v-black-ind-1883.