Bradley v. Village of Union

Headnote

Bradley v. Village of Union, 164 App. Div. 565 , affirmed.

Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the third judicial department, entered December 7, 1914, affirming a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a verdict in an action to recover for an alleged breach of contract in failing to supply the plaintiff with water. The village of Union in the year 1908 took the necessary steps to purchase the water plant theretofore maintained and operated by the Union Water Company, and the transaction was fully and lawfully consummated. Several years prior to this purchase by the defendant the Union Water Company had entered into a contract by the terms of which it supplied water to several families just outside of the corporate limits of the village of Union, in the town of Union. To accomplish this, the Union Water Company had extended its mains by adding several hundred feet of one-inch pipe to its four-inch main. A portion of the one-inch main was within the village limits and a portion of it outside, and the plaintiff purchased his property outside of the village limits from one of the parties

who had thus been supplied with water through the • Union Water Company’s extended main. The plaintiff, after his purchase, continued to be supplied with water from the Union Water Company, and afterward from the village of Union, which purchased all the property belonging to the Union Water Company. The defendant contended that the one-inch extension of the four-inch main was a service pipe, and that it did not belong to the defendant to maintain and operate the same, or at least that it owed no such duty to the plaintiff outside the village limits.