Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837 edition. Excerpt: ... Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge et al. Where a patent is repealed in chancery on a scire facias, it is at the suit of the king, on the ground that he was deceived, and his subjects thereby injured; but there is no case where a court of chancery has ever decreed the prostration of a mill, of a ferry, or other erection, on the sole ground of its diminishing the profits of an ancient one, or the want of power in the king to grant a concurrent franchise at any place not within the limits of one held by grant, custom, or prescription. Taking, then, the cases relied on by the plaintiffs, as they are reported in the books, they not only fail to support their position, but directly overthrow it. The principles established, are equally fatal to their right to recover damages for the consequential injury by an action on the case, or to suppress any rival ferry by an assize of nuisance at law, or a bill for an injunction or suppression in equity. They must, in either case, show in themselves a right of property or possession in the place where a rival ferry is established, or a special custom, compelling the inhabitants of Boston and Charlestown to cross at their ferry, or they can have no standing in any court, even if they were privileged suitors in virtue of the personal prerogative of the king, as the fee farm tenants of a royal manor. As the plaintiffs do not sue in this, or any analogous character, by special privilege, it is unnecessary to show that they cannot be relieved in the character in which they sue, on any principle laid down in the case from Levins, or those cited from Hardress and Anstruther. An explanation of these cases was necessary, because they have been pressed with confidence as in point to the present, and for...