5 Wash. 759 | Wash. | 1893
The opinion of the court was delivered by
In 1889 appellants executed and delivered to the town of Puyallup a deed conveying the land in question to said town for the purposes of a public park. Such deed
That the acts of the appellants outside of the making of said deed were insufficient to constitute a dedication of the land is clear, and, if such deed can have no force in aiding the contention of the respondent that the same has been dedicated to public use, the claim of appellant must be sustained. The important question then, is as to the construction of this deed. Appellants claim that it is absolutely void for the reason that at the time it was executed there was no grantee to take the title. If it is to be construed as a conveyance for private uses, such would be the undoubted effect of the want of a grantee; but if the grant is such that it can be construed as a dedication to the public, such would not be the necessary result. A grant of this kind may be perfectly valid, and such as the courts will fully enforce, even although no grantee whatever be named therein. This distinction grows out of the necessities of the case, and has always been recognized by the courts. In the case of City of Cincinnati v. Lessees of White, 6 Pet. 431, this rule was announced, and a large number of cases cited to sustain the same. Before this decision there had been some claim that, although such rule existed as to streets and highways, it did not exist as to grants to the public for other uses. The court, however, refused to recognize any such distinction, and applied the rule to a public use similar to that sought to be conferred in the case at bar. This same doctrine was again announced by the supreme court of the United States in New Orleans v. United States, 10 Pet. 662; by the supreme court of Ohio in Brown v. Manning, 6 Ohio, 298; and by the supreme court of Illinois in Maywood County v. Village of
Such being the rule as to dedications to public use, it follows that if the deed in question can be construed as such dedication, instead of as a private grant, it can be sustained, though at the time of its execution there was no grantee to take the title. In determining this question the intention of the parties must control. What was the intention of the grantors in making said deed? We think it was to dedicate to the public the land in question for its use as a park, and the supposed incorporation was made the nominal grantee as an aid in the accomplishment of the purpose of the dedication. The principal thing in the mind of the grantors was not as to the particular incorporation which represented the public, but the public itself. And the grant would, under the circumstances, have had full effect at the date of the execution of the deed had there been no conditions attached to the dedication. But there being conditions which required action on the part of the representatives of the public, the grant could not take full effect until the public had so organized that it could bind itself to the performance of the conditions required on its part by the terms of the grant; and as soon as the public had thus organized, and the organization had acted, the dedication became fully effectual. In what we have said above we have given no weight whatever to the fact that there was a corporation in form answering the description of the grantee in the deed, and that the present incorporation might be held to be substantially the successor in interest of such incorporation. There might be a grave question as to whether or not, under all the circumstances of this case, appellants could attack the capacity of the grantee which they them
The decree of the lower court must be affirmed.