Shepherd v. Turner

Appeal—Review of Evidence—Excluded Evidence.—This court, in reviewing upon appeal the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain the findings of the court, cannot consider any excluded evidence.

Id.—Argument—Specifications Omitted from Brief—Abandonment.— Specifications of the insufficiency of the evidence to support the findings, which are not argued in the appellant’s brief, will be deemed abandoned.

Action for Obstruction of Highway—Evidence—Petition and Pencil Slip not Proved.—In an action to remove the defendant’s fence from an alleged public highway, a document purporting to be a petition for a county road, which bears no date, and is not shown to have been on file or in the custody of anyone, and to which is adhesively attached a slip in pencil containing a description of the proposed road, without any evidence to show when it was attached or by whom it was written, is not admissible in evidence to show the formal laying out of the road.

Id.—Record of Supervisors—Failure of Proof.—A portion of the records of the board of supervisors appointing a petitioner to give notice to interested land holders to object to the laying out of a public road, and. subsequently appointing viewers, and adopting their report, not shown to have been based upon any petition, and proper proceedings appearing in the record, and not shown to have been made concerning the road in which the alleged obstruction exists, nor to be connected with the defendant or his grantors, is properly excluded as evidence relating to the formal laying out of the alleged road.

Id.—Report of Notice of Road—Inadmissible Evidence.—A written report to the supervisors stating that the signer had given notice of a county road, specifically described, to all persons living along the line, and that he found them all in favor of the road, which was not under oath, and did not appear to be a public record, and did not show that the defendant or his grantors lived along the line of the proposed road, is not admissible in evidence for any purpose.

Id.—Refusal of Board to Vacate Road—Proceedings Inadmissible.— Proceedings of the board of supervisors upon a petition to vacate a public road, which included the premises upon which defendant had placed his fence, with which proceedings the defendant is not shown to have had any connection, have no tendency to prove thq existence of a highway as against him, and are not admissible in evidence against him.

Id.—Reputation of Highway—Hearsay.—Evidence is not admissible for the purpose of showing that the alleged road was generally spoken of and regarded by the people in the neighborhood as a public road. Hearsay evidence is not admissible to prove the existence of a highway; nor can its existence be proved by showing that it was generally reputed to be a highway.

.Id.—Use of Road—Dedication—Declarations.—While it is competent to prove the use made of the road, and the extent of the use or travel over the road, for the purpose of showing a dedication or adverse user of the road under a claim of right, it is not competent to prove such user by the declarations of third parties.