City of Red Bluff v. Southern Pacific Co.

This cause was tried in the superior court of Tehama County, before Honorable John F. Ellison, judge thereof, who rendered a decision in favor of plaintiff. The facts of the case and the reasons for his conclusion are clearly set forth in an opinion filed in said superior court by Judge Ellison, and, as I am in accord with the views therein expressed, I take the liberty of quoting said opinion as follows:

“The plaintiff brings this action to obtain a decree for the removal of certain obstructions to travel placed in Cedar Street in the city of Red Bluff by the defendant corporation.

“Paragraph II of the complaint alleges that during all times since 1876 there has existed and does now exist within said plaintiff, and running through the entire width thereof from east to west, a certain public street and highway known as Cedar Street. That during all of said time said Cedar Street has had a width of eighty feet, and that during all of said time said street has been and is now a regularly and legally established and existing public street and highway of the said city of Red Bluff for the use and convenience of the citizens of Red Bluff and of the public generally for all kinds of…

pro tem., Dissenting.—As I have not reached the conclusions expressed in the majority opinion of the court, and the questions involved being close and not heretofore definitely settled, I herewith state the case as it appears to me.

On the thirteenth day of May, 1902, the town, now the city, of Bed Bluff, a city of the sixth class, upon the request of the division superintendent of the Southern Pacific Company, adopted a resolution closing Cedar Street in the town of Bed Bluff, the material portions of which resolution are as follows:

It appears from the transcript that after the passage of this resolution the crossing over the railroad tracks of the defendant company on said street were torn out, the building mentioned as the boiler-house completed and used for a number of years, and that prior to the institution of proceedings for the reopening of said street a number of additional tracks were constructed by the defendant company across said street, and that at the time of the trial herein there were existing and being maintained and used by the defendant company eight different tracks across Cedar Street, two of which were and are used as switching leads to an additional…