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3 Mass. 268

Commonwealth v. Carpenter

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court

Decided October 15, 1807

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1807-10-15

<p>When a corporation, dissatisfied with the damages reported by a committer for .aying out a highway, applies to the Court of Sessions for a jury, by whom the damages are reduced, no costs arising upon such application can be taxed for the owner of the land.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1807-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently September 1976

11 state decisions

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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.

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Curia.

¶1The statute giving costs to the party prevailing in civil actions does not extend to proceedings of this kind. The silence of the statutes for regulating the method of laying out highways, in respect to the payment of costs by a party who rests satisfied with the report of the committee, is very reasonable. It would, without doubt, be inequitable to mulct him in costs, for what, at most, must be considered as a mistake in judgment of a committee, in whose appointment he had no voice, and over whose inquiries or report he had no control. But there is no provision of law authorizing him to recover costs.

¶2The proceedings of the Sessions in this case must, therefore, be quashed, so far as they relate to the taxing of costs for the respondent against the corporation, and affirmed as to the rest.

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