Public-domain · open source
OpenJurist

48 Vt. 209

Farnsworth v. Goodhue

Supreme Court of Vermont

Decided January 15, 1876

Supreme Court of Vermont · decided 1876-01-15

TRESPASS qua. clau.' Pleas, the general issue, and justification as contractor under the St. Albans Aqueduct Company, a corporation chartered by the legislature for the purpose of supplying the villagé of St. Albans with water. Replication, de injuria. Trial by the court, April Term, 1875, Royce, J., presiding.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1876-01-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently January 1939

4 state decisions

201876188018901900191019201930decided

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 →

¶1The opinion of the court was delivered by

Wheeler, J.

¶2There is no occasion to examine into or determine in this case any question concerning the constitutionality of the various provisions of the act incorporating this aqueduct company, for by the terms of the act it was to apply only to entering upon and using lands through which it might “ be necessary for said aqueduct to pass,” and it is neither expressly nor impliedly found that it was necessary for the aquduct to pass through this *211land. No doubt there might have been land that the aqueduct would net itself actually touch, and still have been so situated that it would have been necessary to enter upon it, and if so, probably the statute would cover such a case of actual necessity. But such statutes are strongly derogatory to common right, and no cases can be brought within them except such as come within their terms with imperative necessity. This is not such a case, and the statute affords no justification of the entry.

¶3Judgment affirmed.

/48/vt/209 · .json · Public domain