15 Or. 251 | Or. | 1887
The respondents herein brought suit in the Circuit Court of Clatsop County, to restrain the appellants from building upon a certain strip of land alleged to be one of the streets in the city of Astoria, which they designate as “ Hamilton Street,” and from thereby obstructing the alleged street. They own certain lots in severalty abutting upon the said strip of land, and base their right of suit upon the grounds that the threatened building upon, and obstructing the pretended street, will work an especial injury to them, differing from that suffered in consequence thereof by the general public. The appellants claim that the locus in quo is not a street, but private property belonging to the appellant R. S. Strahan, as assignee of the estate of the appellant Thomas Monteith. The main question in controversy is, whether the strip of land is such street or not; though the appellants’ counsel contended at the hearing that the suit could not be maintained until the legal title to the property was settled in a court of law; and that the respondents had failed to show by their allegations and proofs that any such wrong to their rights was threatened, as would authorize the interposition of a court of equity in their behalf. The latter question is by no means free from doubt, but I pass it over for the present in order to consider the general merits of the case. The parties to
The respondents, however’, insist that he strenuously objected to it in the outset, which I have no doubt is the fact. But however that may be, we find that on the fourteenth day of May, 1879, he conveyed to E. D. Heatley, J. W. Grace, and J. M. TenBosch, trustees of the estate of M. J. Kinney, among other
Two questions are presented by this act. The first one is its construction. Unless the legislature intended by it to grant to