116 Mass. 84 | Mass. | 1874
The city council of Springfield has general jurisdiction of the subject of altering highways in the city. Sts. 1852r
But the mayor and aldermen of Springfield had joined with the directors of the Boston and Albany Railroad Company in a petition to the county commissioners, within the jurisdiction conferred upon them by the St. of 1872, e. 262, to change the grade of Main Street at this crossing, and proceedings upon that petition are still pending. All the objections made in the present case by the city council to the validity of those proceedings have been considered by the court in the case of Boston & Albany Railroad v. County Commissioners, ante, 73, except those relating to the qualifications of the persons nominated as members of the special commission to determine by what parties the order of the county commissioners shall be carried into effect and the expenses thereof paid; and if either of those nominations was illegal, it would not affect the jurisdiction of the county commissioners over the original petition, in case they shall be permitted to proceed thereon, by the final judgment of this court upon the writ of certiorari issued to them.
The jurisdiction of the county commissioners, having first attached to the subject of the alteration of the grade of Main Street at the railroad crossing, necessarily excluded the jurisdiction of any other tribunal over the same subject until those proceedings were ended. Stearns v. Stearns, 16 Mass. 167. Foster v. The Richard Busteed, 100 Mass. 409, 411. And that principle applies with peculiar force to this case, in which the mayor and aldermen, after joining with the directors of the railroad corporation in invoking the action of the county commissioners, have undertaken, with the assent of the same corporation, and the concurrence of the common council, to nullify and defeat by their own act the proceedings which they had set in motion.
As it appears that the petitioner owns an estate abutting on that part of Main Street the grade of which is proposed to be altered, and that no work upon that street has yet been done under the order of the city council, the
Writ of certiorari must issue.