Case ID: me_42/html/0478-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Cutting, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Inhabitants of Bethel, petitioners, versus County Commissioners of Oxford County.
    County Commissioners have no authority to act on a petition, representing that a town has unreasonably refused and delayed to allow and approve a town way legally laid out, and praying that the commissioners accept and approve it, unless the petition, or the record of the Court, show that the application was seasonably made to them.
    There must be nothing left to inference in such a case.
    Petition for Certiorari.
    The principal facts in this case were as follows: — The selectmen of the town of Bethel, laid out a certain public way, and reported the same to the town at a public meeting of the inhabitants, who, as was alleged, unreasonably refused and delayed to allow and approve said way. Whereupon the following petition was presented to the county commissioners of Oxford county: —
    
      “ To the Hon. Court of County Commissioners for the county of Oxford, to be holden at Paris, within and for the county of Oxford, on the 2d Tuesday of May, A. D. 1854.
    “Respectfully show your petitioners, that a town way, or a lane, leading to Joseph Holt’s, seventy-eight rods from the county road, to land of Edward Covel, in the town of Bethel, would be of great public convenience; that the selectmen of said town, after notice and warning of the parties, have laid out such way and reported the same to the town, at a public meeting of the inhabitants duly notified and warned; yet the town has unreasonably refused and delayed to allow and approve said town way, laid out by the selectmen aforesaid, and to put the same on record. Therefore, your petitioners, considering themselves aggrieved by such delay and refusal, pray that your honors would, agreeably to law in such case made and provided, accept and approve said town way, and direct the same to be recorded in the books of said town.
    (Signed,) “Nathaniel Swan, 2d, and six others.”
    The Commissioners issued their warrant upon the above petition, and examined and approved the town way so laid out.
    The inhabitants of Bethel, by O’Neil W. Robinson, their agent, specially appointed for the purpose, and Joseph Holt of Bethel, in his private and individual capacity, then petitioned for a writ of certiorari, to cause the records of the aforesaid doings of the Commissioners to be certified to and brought before this Court, that the said proceedings and the records thereof might bo quashed.
    The petitioners assigned “the following as some of the many errors and irregularities in the acts and doings of the Commissioners and the records thereof:”—
    3 st. That said original petition of Nathaniel Swan and six others, does not show that their said appeal from the doings of said town, and application to said Court of County Commissioners, was made within one year from the time when it is alleged that said town unreasonably refused and delayed to approve and allow the town way alleged to have been laid out by the selectmen of said town; nor does it show when any action was taken by said town in the premises, or when the selectmen thereof located the same; and that, therefore, no jurisdiction is given to said County Commissioners to act on said petition and application aforesaid.
    2d. That said petition, or records of said Court, does not show that the way prayed for, leads from land under the possession or improvement of any one of the petitioners for said road, to any highway or town way.
    3d. That America Bartlett, who, by said record, acted as a County Commissioner for Oxford county, and who, by said record “B” and “C,” acted at the view, examination, hearing and location, Sept. 21, 1854, was not at that time a County Commissioner of Oxford county, but was in September', 1854, elected for a term of three years, to commence in January, A. D. 1855. But that the Commissioners of said county for the year 1854, were John H. Spring, John W. Wilson and James Brown.
    By agreement of parties this petition was submitted to the Court without argument.
    
      D. R. Hastings, for petitioners.
    
      Sullivan C. Andrews, County Attorney, for respondents.
   Cutting, J.

It does not appear that the County Commissioners had any jurisdiction; there being no allegation in the petition presented to them, nor any thing appearing in their record, that shows the application to have been seasonably made; and nothing is to be inferred. Writ granted.

Tenney, C. J., and Rice, Appleton and May, J. J., concurred.