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52 Ill. 78

Trickey v. Schlader

Illinois Supreme Court

Decided September 15, 1869

Illinois Supreme Court · decided 1869-09-15

Writ of Error to the Circuit Court of Jo Daviess county; the Hon. Benjamin B. Sheldon, Judge, presiding. This was a bill in chancery, exhibited in the court below by Sehlader and Schultz against Christina Trickey, praying that she be enjoined from closing up a certain public road running through certain land of which her husband died seized. The court below granted the injunction, and this writ of error is prosecuted to reverse that decree.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“As this road was only an easement, and did not dispose of the fee, the question of a homestead right in the land by the surviving widow can not arise.”

quoted by 1 later decision, including Chi. Coating Co. v. United States

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1869-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently June 2018

1 federal appellate · 2 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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Mr. Chief Justice Breese

¶1delivered the opinion of the Court:

¶2We are unable to perceive from this record that any right which the plaintiff in error has in the land over which this road runs, has been invaded.

¶3The facts are, that the road was petitioned for at the instance of the owner of the land over which it was to run in part; that he, as one of the commissioners of highways, acted upon the petition, and granted the order to establish the road; that he executed a release under seal, for a valuable consideration, as expressed in the instrument, of all claim to damages sustained by him by reason of laying out and opening the road through his land; that the road was opened, used and worked up to the time of the owner’s death, he assisting in building bridges upon it.

¶4These acts amount to a dedication of the land for the purposes of this easement, and estop him, and all others claiming under him, from averring anything against them. They manifest an intention, on his part, to appropriate this land occupied by the road to the purposes to which it was appropriated. The objection, that all the requirements of the statute were not observed can have no weight, when the owner himself initiated the proceeding, and that every act done was with his knowledge and consent.

¶5It is too late for the plaintiff in error now to deny there was a road legally established.

¶6As this road was only an easement, and did not dispose of the fee, the question of a homestead right in the land by the surviving widow can not arise.

¶7As this road was not established against the will of the owner of the land, hut at his instance and request, no question of power can arise.

¶8We decide the case on the acts of the owner, which, in our judgment, amount to a dedication of the land.

¶9The decree of the circuit court is affirmed.

¶10Decree affirmed.

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