Case ID: mass_4/html/0549-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Curia.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

* Commonwealth versus The Inhabitants of Cambridge.
    The Sessions are bound to notify the town in which an alteration of a highway is prayed for, previous to an adjudication of the common convenience or necessity of such alteration.
    This was a certiorari to the Court of Sessions, directing them to certify the record of their proceedings relative to the making alterations in the highway, leading from the line of the county of Worcester, through sundry towns in this county, to West Boston Bridge.
    
    The writ issued at the motion of the respondents; and upon inspection of the proceedings, it did not appear that notice had been given to the town of Cambridge, previously to the appointment of a committee, to make said alterations, or to the adjudication that the same were of common convenience and necessity.
   Curia.

The proceedings in this case must be quashed. The Sessions have undertaken to adjudge that a certain highway be laid out in Cambridge, it being of common necessity and convenience, without notifying or hearing that town upon the question before the adjudication. By this adjudication, the rights and interests of the inhabitants of Cambridge are directly affected, as they must be at the expense of making the way, when laid out, and of compensating the owners of the land, over which it may be located, for any damages they may sustain by the location. And it is an essential principle of natural justice, that every man have an opportunity to he heard in a court of law, upon every question involving his rights or interests, before he is affected by any juridical decision of the question, 
      
      
         [See Rev. Stat. c. 24, § 2. — Ed.]