21 Wis. 451 | Wis. | 1867
We are of the opinion that the charge of the court in this case was as favorable to the defendant as the facts would warrant. The law in respect to dedication was correctly defined as being an appropriation of land by its owner for any general and public use, the owner reserving to himself no other rights in the soil than such as are perfectly compatible with the full exercise and enjoyment of the public use to which the property has been devoted. Gardner v. Tisdale, 2 Wis., 153; Connehan v. Ford, 9 id., 240; Irwin v. Dixion, 9 How. (U. S.), 10. The court instructed the jury that an intention on the part of the owner to dedicate must be shown, as well as an actual appropriation of the property by the public for the uses to which it is dedicated ; and further that the acts of plaintiff in building the fence, and permitting the road to be opened and -worked, were binding upon Richards only so far as he had au
A new trial was granted on the ground that the circuit judge supposed he had fallen into an error in charging the jury that it was entirely immaterial whether the plaintiff upon his own behalf did acts of dedication of the premises in question, before he became the owner. The court seems to have supposed that the plaintiff, by aiding in building a fence upon the land, and in permitting a road to be opened and worked upon it, was estopped, after he became the owner, from contesting the question of dedication by his grantor. But if the plaintiff had no interest whatever in the land, no right to perform any act of dedication in reference to it, when the fence was built and the alleged road opened over it, upon what principle can it be claimed that he is estopped from showing, when he afterwards acquired title, that the owner never did dedicate it to the pub-
This point is the only one in the case we deem it necessary to notice.
We are of the opinion the circuit court erred in granting a new trial.
By the Oourt. — The order granting a new trial is reversed.