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3 Yeates 153

Feree v. Meily

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided March 15, 1801

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1801-03-15

The following facts appeared on the return of the record. The plaintiff preferred his petition to May sessions 1796, setting forth, that a road for the accommodation of the public had lately been laid out from the village of Strasburgh to James Gibbons’s mill, on the state road leading from Lancaster to Philadelphia; that it runs through the improved lands of the petitioner 50 perches, and along his line 20 perches, and had been opened of the breadth of 33 feet; that the…

Decided 1801-03-15

¶1The court unanimously reversed the proceedings on the last ground. The Chief Justice, however, during the argument, said, that the case of owners of valuable grounds near the city or towns, stripped of their property for the public emolument, being hard, he would adopt the construction that the lands should be paid for out of the county stock, as the words of the act were sufficiently comprehensive to warrant such construction. But all the other members of the court held, that the legislature could not at that early day have contemplated a compensation for the soil of improved lands converted into a public road, and that the uniform interpretation of a century had settled the true law. This construction seemed to them to be strongly fortified by a consideration of the proprietary allowance made for roads and highways in all their grants.

¶2Judgment of the sessions reversed.

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