Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

199 Mass. 486

Moran v. Gallagher

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided September 4, 1908

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1908-09-04

Petition, filed in the Supreme Judicial Court for the county of Worcester June 12,1908, for a writ of certiorari to set aside the action of the respondent, judge of the Police Court of Fitch-burg, in revoking a license, which had been granted to the petitioners by the board of license commissioners of that city, to sell intoxicating liquors to be drunk on the premises. There was a hearing before Rugg, J., who reserved the case for consideration by the full court.

Relies on Commonwealth v. Morrison · Allen v. City of Boston · Proprietors of Locks & Canals on Merrimack River v. Nashua & Lowell Railroad

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1908-09-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently September 1945

5 state decisions

2019081910192019301940decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Knowlton, C. J.

¶1This is a petition for a writ of certiorari to set aside an order of the Police Court of Fitchburg, revoking a license of the petitioners to sell intoxicating liquor to be drunk on the premises. The order was made under the R. L. c. 100, § 15. It is undisputed that the Simonds Manufacturing Company, the applicant before the police court for a revocation of the license, had duly objected to the granting of the license, as an owner of real estate within twenty-five feet of the premises described in the application for the license. The only question that arises under the present petition is whether it was such an owner of real estate within the meaning of the statute.

¶2It appears that it was the owner of the real estate on the opposite side of the street, which was forty feet wide at that point, and it was also the owner of the fee of the entire street in front of the property described in the application for a license. It had a perfect title to the land in the street, subject to an easement of the public to use it for travel. The precise question is whether the existence of such an easement in land within twenty-five feet of the premises described in an application for a license leaves the owner of the fee with such a title as is necessary to constitute him an owner of the real estate within the meaning of the statute.

¶3There is no doubt that in a general sense he is the owner, and “ has a right to the enjoyment of any use of his estate consistent with the servitude to which it is subjected, and may maintain trespass for any interruption of his enjoyment.” O'Linda v. Lothrop, 21 Pick. 292, 297. Proprietors of Locks & Canals v. Nashua & Lowell Railroad, 104 Mass. 1, 9, 11. He may build his cellar under the highway. Allen v. Boston, 159 Mass. 324, 335. See also Commonwealth v. Morrison, 197 Mass. 199. *488If the highway or street is discontinued, his title immediately becomes absolute.

¶4If the contention of the present petitioners could be maintained, there would be ground for a similar contention against an owner of land subject to the easement of a private way, especially if the persons entitled to use the way were numerous. It might be argued that other burdensome easements would have the same effect to deprive the owner of his right, under the statute, to object to the issuing of a license.

¶5We are of opinion that the Simonds Manufacturing Company was plainly the owner of the land in the street, within the ordinary meaning of the word. There is no good reason for holding that the word is used in the statute otherwise than in its ordinary signification, and the entry must be

¶6Petition dismissed.

/199/mass/486 · .json · Public domain