9.

When the owner of land is constructing or repairing a building
adjoining the highway, it is his duty to provide sufficient
safeguards to warn and protect passing travellers against any danger
arising therefrom; and if he neglects to do so, and a traveller is
injured by a falling brick, stick of timber, or otherwise, he is
responsible.[83]

[83] 123 Mass. 26.

If the adjoining owner of a building suffers snow and ice to
accumulate on the roof, and allows it to remain there for an unusual
and unreasonable time, he is liable, if it slides off and injures a
passing traveller.[84] And, generally, the adjoining owner is bound
to use ordinary care in maintaining his own premises in such a
condition that persons lawfully using the highway may do so with
safety.

[84] 101 Mass. 251; 106 Mass. 194.

The general doctrine as to the use of property is here, as elsewhere,
_Sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedas_,--"So use your own property as not
to injure the rights of another." If you make an excavation on your
land so near to a highway that travellers are liable accidentally to
fall therein, you had better surround it with a fence or other
safeguard sufficient to protect reasonably the safety of travellers. If
you have any passage-ways, vaults, coal-holes, flap-doors, or traps of
any kind on your premises, which are dangerous for children or unwary
adults, you had better abolish them, or at any rate take reasonable
precaution to cover or guard them in such manner as ordinary prudence
dictates, and especially if they are near the highway; for if you do
not you may, some time when not convenient for you, be called upon to
pay a large claim for damages or to defend yourself against an
indictment. But if you have so covered and guarded them, and by the act
of a trespasser, or in some other way without fault on your part, the
cover, fence, or guard is removed, you are not liable until you have
had actual or constructive notice of the fact, and have had reasonable
opportunity to put it right.[85]

[85] 4 Carr. & Payne, 262, 337; 51 N.Y. 229; 19 Conn. 507.

CHAPTER XV.

PRIVATE WAYS.

A private way is the right of passage over another man's land. It
may be established and discontinued in the same manner as a public
way, and it may also arise from necessity. A way of necessity is
where a person sells land to another which is wholly surrounded by
his own land, or which cannot be reached from the publ