Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1900 — Of Interest to Remington. [ARTICLE]

Of Interest to Remington.

Last Friday the supreme court handed downs decision that is of deep interest to many towns of the state, and especially so to at least one town in Jasper county —Remington. The case was entitled the City of Seymour vs the B. & O. S-W. railway, and had been long pending. The road’s right-of-way through the town is used as a street and the town decided to improve it. The company objected and suit was brought. The city won in the lower courts but the case finally reached the supreme court and it was held that the right-of-way was not a street. Following is the gist of the court’s findings in this particular case: Where a railroad company obtained a deed for a right-of-way, eighty feet wide, through certain land on which it constructed its railroad and has since operated it, a town plat, executed by the land o.vner after the railroad was built and before the deed was made, showing the street more than eighty feet wide with the railroad right-of-way of indefinite width down the middle does not establish any part of the eighty feet wide deeded to the railroad formed a part of the street. Possession by a railroad of its right-of-way by the tracks down the center constitutes possession of the full width deeded to it.

Where a street twenty-three feet wide extended along the side of a railroad right-of-way on which the railroad maintained its main track and side tracks used for Leading and unloading freight, the fact that travelers frequently left the street to drive upon the railroad right-of-way did not establish an implied dedication thereof as a street when the part driven over was in constant use by shippers in loading and unloading freight on the railroad side tracks. The mere concurrent use of land with the owner when such use is neither exclusive nor adverse will not establish a prescriptive right to use it.