Kelliher v. Miller

Decided September 15, 1867

Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · decided 1867-09-15

Complaint for flowing land, brought under Gen. Sts. c. 149. At the trial in the superior court the complainant introduced evidence tending to show that he was the owner of two contiguous lots of land situated on a small brook in Greenfield ; that the respondent erected in 1851, and had since then maintained, across the brook, a milldam which flowed back the water upon those lots of land in times of freshet or high water; and that such flowing had injured the land.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1867-09-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions — most recently November 1916

4 state decisions

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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Foster, J.

¶1On the question of damages, evidence of the amount paid by the respondent for flowing other land was inadmissible. How much the complainant’s land had been injured *72was the question upon trial. The circumstances in the other case may have been very dissimilar, and the amount of damages paid to the other land-owner may have been greater or less than adequate compensation to him. The point has been already adjudged in Tyler v. Mather, 9 Gray, 183. And in the opinion of the court, it does not fall within the analogy of those cases Which permit the value of adjacent and similarly situated parcels of land, as indicated by the prices for which they have sold, to be shown where the question on trial is the value of the estate.

¶2Exceptions overruled.