City of Syracuse v. Cooney

Headnote

City of Syracuse v. Cooney, 185 App. Div. 903 , affirmed.

. Appeal, by permission, from a judgment of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the fourth judicial department, entered September 5, 1918, unanimously affirming a judgment in favor of plaintiff entered upon a decision of the court on trial at Special Term. The complaint alleged that South Salina street, in front of defendant’s premises, for more than one hundred years prior to the commencement of this action had been a public street ninety-nine feet in width, dedicated to the public for street purposes, and that since the incorporation of the plaintiff it had been one of the public streets of the city; that in 1898 defendant Heffron wrongfully took from the heirs of Daniel Becker, who had no title thereto, a conveyance including in its description a strip of land twenty-nine feet wide along the westerly side of South

Safina street; that the defendants Cooney and Wallace had incumbered said strip with permanent structures, and claimed title thereto, and asked judgment directing Cooney and Wallace to remove said buildings, restraining them from obstructing said street, and correcting the deed to the defendants Cooney and Wallace and the mortgages held by defendants Heffron and Britcher, by excluding said strip of land from their respective descriptions. The answer alleged that Safina street at the point in question was but seventy feet in width. The trial court held that when defendants’ original grantor acquired title the street had been mapped ninety-nine feet wide and that consequently they had no title to the strip in question.