The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-07-20
WESTPORT

l WESTPORT
 Westport, July 20-In the opinion of Judge Horace B. Scott in the Common
 Pleas court, civil side. the selectmen | thority to take the action they did
 in tearing down bath houses at Com
 DO beach. Judge Scott finds for the 1 defendants in the suit brought by Ed
 win N Beers and others against the selectmen of the town. It is quite
 probable that Attorney Walsh of Nor
 walk, counsel for tic plaintiffs, will I appeal from this decision to the Su- preme Court of Errors.
 1 The memorandum in Judge Scott's decision follows: ''In the above en-
 titled action, Judgment is rendered in l favor of the defendants with costs. l The following issues are found in fa- vor of the plaintiffs, to wit, all of l those presented by the complaint ex- cept the allegation that the defen- dants acted without color of rights, l the issue presented in the answer, that Compo beach was a public beach, and l that it was 8 town common. All of the remaining issues are found in fa- vor of the defendants.
 1 This case and its companion cases were tried together and this memoran-. dunn applies to all three of the cases. i The defendants acted in their capa- l city of selectmen of Westport, in tear l ing down the bath houses. I do not I find that they performed any act of destruction to the bath houses and the articles therein which was wrought, | if they had a right to tear down the houses their liability depends on whether or not they had such right" "The grant to Ithe property of Fair field of 1885 conveys all lands with in these abutments upon the sea to- ward the southland in length from the sea into the wilderness This description covers the ground upon which the bath houses stood. There is no evidence that this part of the beach was ever allotted to any indi- vidual proprietor or that any individ ual ever exercised ownership of it." Tt was individual land-that for merly belonged to the Town of Fair field and to the proprietors therein and the title to it became vested in the Town of Westport by the action of the Legislature of 1907. Ever since then the town has owned this portion of the beach. The locus cannot prop erly be called town common or a public beach: 1t is the property of the town, and the town has a right to prescribe the manner of it's use, and to prevent encroachment upon it. The plaintiff had no right to main- tain his bath house where he was ex- cept by permission of the town. It has appeared that several years be- fore August 1909 and prior to the ac- quiring of ownership of the beach by the town a former selectman had given permission to the three plaintiffs in these cases to locate their bath houses and that MT. Brewer, Gone of the plaintiffs) had paid g for the privilege. The action of the select men was apparently based upon the vote of the town in 1903. by that vote the license to occupy the beach was an annual one and even if the town had an authority to pass the vote and the selectmen had power under it to issue the licenses, they had ex-9 pired long prior to August 1909, and the plaintiffs had not at that date any right to maintain their houses there. Their counsel, in fact, hardly claim that they had such right. The main contention is that the defen-@ dants had no right to remove the bath houses and that the town could do it only by the use of summary pro- cess writs- I do not consider that the gravity of a license to keep a bath house in the beach for a year, even if the license was rightfully ship between the parties to require a resort to- the statutes of summary process to eject the licensee after the year expired. q
 ",The defendants rely upon the votes of several town meetings as sustain
 
 directed them to remove these bath houses. There is only one of these meetings that took any action which can bear this construction. That is the meeting of May A, 1909. On May z, 1909 the selectmen gave notice by publication in the Westerporter Her aid that the town would remove from the beach all bath houses which re- mained there after May 25 1909. On the 17th they warned a special meet ing fors the 24th for the purpose of instructing the selectmen what &C., ton to take in regard to moving the bath houses from Compo Beach, and also to determine whether the town would erect bath houses itself and rent them. It is true that the meeting did not in terms act upon the first subject named in the call, but after the first selectman had given a yer bal statement of the situation at the beach the meeting formed a set of resolutions based upon the preamble Whereas the selectmen of the town houses from Compo Beach, These resolutions provided for the erection by the town of a bath pavilion the selectmen were instructed to proceed to carry out the afore mentioned pro- visions. There were then 6S bath houses erected by individuals upon the beach, and it was necessary to re- move some of them in order to con- struct the towns pavilion. These res olutions were based on a preamble re- citing the order of removal and the plan adopted for the use of the beach was not in harmony with the al- lowing of these 6s private houses to remain upon the site of the new pavil- ion; and the meeting voted down a proposed amendment that the select men should collect rental for the hous- es for-that season. Under the cir-