Opinion ID: 1530103
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: Incipient Dedication

Text: In a line of cases decided in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, before municipal subdivision regulations became governing policy, incipient dedication of roads and highways by platting lots with streets and roads and conveying them with reference to the plat was the recognized method for streets to be opened to the public. The law of incipient dedication is a bedrock principle in our jurisprudence and has never been varied or modified by this Court. Therefore, we reject the trial justice's finding that proof of dedication by the platter is almost always non-existent as clearly wrong. In Chapin v. Brown, 15 R.I. 579, 581-82, 10 A. 639, 639 (1887), a bill in equity seeking to restrain the respondent from blocking an unimproved roadway, this Court was confronted with a recorded plat in the town of Tiverton that included North Avenue. The complainant held deeds to a lot within the recorded plat; the deeds referred to the plat, identifying the lot by number and describing North Avenue as bordering the lot. Id. at 582-83, 10 A. at 640. The defendant contended that: said North Avenue was never laid out    as a street or way    and was never in contemplation of any seller or buyer of any lot in the plat as being in any way appurtenant to lot 31. Id. at 582, 10 A. at 640. This Court held that when the grantee of a lot so platted purchases it, the existence of the streets as platted    operates by way of implied covenant, implied grant, estoppel, or dedication, whichever way of operation may be the truer, to secure to the grantee a right of way over such platted streets. Id. at 584, 10 A. at 641. We cited, with approval, a California Supreme Court case, decided in 1852: Where lots are sold as fronting on or bounded by a certain space, designated in the conveyance as a street, the use of such space as a street passes as appurtenant to the grant, and vests in the grantee, in common with the public, a right of way over said street. Id. at 583, 10 A. at 640 (quoting Breed v. Cunningham, 2 Cal. 361 (1852)). Because North Avenue, as depicted on the plat, was open and unobstructed with access to a public thoroughfare, this Court concluded that the plat does not indicate any obstruction anywhere in it which would lead a purchaser to suppose that it was intended to be incumbered by gates and fences, from the highway on the east to the highway on the west. Chapin, 15 R.I. at 585, 10 A. at 641. In Baker, 22 R.I. at 472, 48 A. at 796, a case similar to this appeal, this Court was confronted with a ten-foot strip of land running between two public streets. Although the strip was not marked as a street or gangway, a single justice of the Superior Court found that to be the intention of the grantor, who had conveyed his property to a group of trustees, who conveyed a lot as bounded northerly by a gangway. Id. at 472, 48 A. at 796. This Court held: Spaces left unmarked on a plat may show a dedication for a street or gangway when taken in connection with declarations of the owner or with user.    Such intent becomes conclusive when embodied in a deed by reference to the space as a gangway or street. The layout on the plat, the reference to it as a gangway in the deed of the trustees soon after, the continued reference to it in deeds since, and the subsequent use of it give ample proof of the dedication of the strip as a gangway. Had the strip been named as a street, there could have been no question as to its dedication. But the purpose of the strip is just as evident as though the owner had written on it `This is for a gangway.' Id. (Emphasis added.) This Court also declared that there was no requirement that the plan contain language `expressing the    purposes of the different spaces and divisions,' id. at 472, 48 A. at 796, if the purpose is apparent or when it becomes so from subsequent user and reference. Id. at 473, 48 A. at 796. Noting that the deeds were from trustees who held the entire tract and referred to the strip as a gangway, this Court concluded that this was as effectual a dedication of it as the deed of [the original grantor] would have been. Id. at 473, 48 A. at 796. [5] Accordingly, unless the plat itself, by specific language, broken lines, or other marks, or the deeds indicate otherwise, sale of lots with reference to the plat is an incipient dedication that the roads are offered for public use, pending official action or public user. This was the state of the law in 1921, when the trustees recorded the First Ebbs Plat and proceeded to sell the subdivided lots by reference to the plat.