75 Md. 481 | Md. | 1892
delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case falls directly, it seems to us, within the decision in Peabody Heights Company vs. Sadtler, 63 Md., 533. No one questions that a grant of land bordering ■on a highway, carries as a general rule, the fee to the middle of the road, if the grantor is the owner of the fee. The law never presumes that in parting with his interest in the land adjoining a public way. the grantor meant to reserve the fee in the way, subject to the public easement. And hence a grant of land described as bordering “on,” “along” or “by” a highway will by legal implication, carry the fee to the centre of the road. But this presumption, like all other presumptions, may be rebutted, and if it plainly appears from the language used and the nature of the property, the grantor meant to limit the grant to the line of the road, and to reserve to himself the fee in the road-bed subject to the use of it by the public as a highway, then, of course, this plainly expressed intention must prevail. And, whatever may be the rule elsewhere, it is well settled in this State that a grant of land by metes and bounds, and courses and distances, with calls for visible boundaries on the side of a highway; for instance a call for a stone planted on the south side of a road, and running thence, by the south side of the road to another stone, these calls and boundaries will be construed as defining the limits •of the property thereby conveyed; and the grantee under such a grant will not take the fee to the middle of the road. Such was the description of the property in the Peabody Heights Company case. There the lot conveyed
Judgment affirmed.