Shawmut Mfg. Co. v. Inhabitants of Benton

• Decision Date: 30 August 1923
• Parties: SHAWMUT MFG. CO. v. INHABITANTS OF BENTON.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

122 A. 49

SHAWMUT MFG. CO.

v. INHABITANTS OF BENTON.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Aug. 30, 1923.

Report from Supreme Judicial Court, Kennebec County, at Law.

Proceeding by the Shawmut Manufacturing Company against the Inhabitants of Benton, on an appeal from denial for abatement of taxes. Reported for final judgment by the Law Court. Appeal dismissed.

Argued before CORNISH, C. J., and SPEAR, HANSON, DUNN, MORRILL, and DEASY, JJ.

Weeks & Weeks, of Fairfield, for appellant.

Harvey D. Eaton, of Waterville, for respondent.

DUNN, J. An appeal under Revised Statutes, c. 10, §§ 79 and 80, first, to the commissioners of Kennebec county, and from the adverse decision of that board to this court at nisi prius, from the denial by local assessors of a petition for an abatement of taxes assessed in 1920. The justice below reserved the case, both of fact and law, for final judgment by the Law Court.

The issue was broadened, by mutual consent of the parties, beyond the allegations of the petition and the reasons of the appeals, to include the inquiry of whether all the assessed property was within the territorial limits of the town of Benton. The case being here on report, with technical pleading no longer a matter of concern, this new question has been considered. A study of the evidence fails to sustain the assertion that the assessors mistook the true and legal position of Benton's western boundary line. If in passing there be granted, what it is not necessary at present to decide, and that is that the river boundary of the original township of Clinton, from which Sebasticook, now called Benton, was set off into a separate town, was laid down by Massachusetts at the bank, and not in the middle of the river, then any dominion over the land between the bank and the river's thread was never placed elsewhere by that commonwealth, except that eventually the title thereto was vested in our own state of Maine. The act incorporating Clinton is numbered 62 in the Massachusetts Laws of 1794-95: that incorporating Sebasticook, Chapter 40, Maine Priv. & Sp. L. 1842; and that changing the name to Benton, chapter 311, Maine Priv. & Sp. L. 1850.

Towns are without power to alter boundary lines. They cannot enlarge their extents or taxing jurisdictions by prescription, however extended in time. Eden v. Pineo, 108 Me. 73, 78 Atl. 1126, Ann. Cas. 1913A, 1340. If uncertainty attach to a charter's meaning, contemporaneous and subsequent Interpretation by those in interest might aid in construing that which ink and paper were made to say. But mere erroneous recognition of the location of a town's boundary line, in spite of universal but mistaken supposition that the accepted place was the right one, cannot be superior and paramount in dignity and importance to the authority of the act incorporating the town. This, however, does not affect the case in hand one way or the other, since no ambiguity lies concealed on its page.

Commissioners, appointed in appropriate judicial proceedings, can ascertain and fix lines in dispute between towns, "and such lines shall be deemed in every court and for every purpose the dividing lines between such towns." R. S. c. 4, § 136; Winthrop v. Readfield, 90 Me. 235, 38 Atl. 93. That was done in 1896 as regards the line for a part of the way between Benton and the town of Fairfield on the opposite side of the river; but the report of the commissioners depends so much upon localities that it is not easy to make it intelligible without reference to a plan which is not in evidence; nor is it necessary to do so, because the line so determined is not involved.

If Massachusetts delimited Clinton's bound at the river's bank, it does not necessarily follow that Sebasticook's line was drawn there too. Whether it was or not depends upon a construction of the act of incorporation, for the Legislature may establish and change the boundaries of towns at will. The descriptive part of the act or charter in question is thus: All of Clinton lying south and east of a dividing line, "beginning on the Kennebec river, in the center line between L 2 and K 1," thence to and up the Sebasticook river, "in the center thereof," to the east line of Clinton, shall be the new town. A punctuation point, a comma inserted after the word "line" and before the word "between" would have made it readily possible for the reader's eye to ken, at a single glance, where distinctive meaning came into play: "Beginning on the Kennebec river, in the center line (,) between L 2 and K 1." L 2 and K 1 are inferred to refer to a dividing line between lots delineated on a plan which mention made a part of the description, and a lot-dividing line scarcely could be perceived to have a center.

Ordinarily, where a stream of water, above the tide, and therefore not technically navigable, constitutes the boundary line of an incorporated territory, the thread of the stream is the true boundary line. Perkins v. Oxford, 66 Me. 545. There is nothing to take this case out of the general rule. By implication of law, in the absence of negativing words, the side lines of a riparian proprietor, whose estate is bounded by an innavigable river, are extended from the termini on the margin, at right angles from the stream to include one half of the bed of the river. A description "on" the stream carries likewise. Lowell v. Bobinson, 16 Me. 357, 33 Am. Dec. 671; Pike v. Munroe, 36 Me. 309, 58 Am. Dec. 751; Wilson v. Harrisburg, 107 Me. 207, 77 Atl. 787. Township boundaries are construed in like manner. Perkins v. Oxford, supra. Not only was Sebasticook's line begun "on" the river, but it was begun "in the center line between L 2 and K. 1" — the very center line which marked the easterly boundary of the domain of the adjoining municipality of Fairfield, at which the Legislature was free to begin. The line was run to another river's center and up that river to the old town's easterly exterior. All the territory south and east of that line, and by necessary conclusion west and north of other lines, became Sebasticook. The central line of the Kennebec River was made that town's western limit.

To pursue this phase a step further: Thirty-one years afterward Blinker's Island was taken from Sebasticook, or Benton as it had come to be known, and made a part of Fairfield. Note, in chapter 390, Priv. & Sp. L. 1873, this language:

"All that part of the town of Benton * * * lying westerly of (a line) beginning in the west line of Benton in the middle of the Kennebec river," etc.

In the knowledge of this evidence any doubt as to the situation of the river boundary of Benton is set at rest. The reverse of the contention that the bank is the confine is conformable to fact. Changed only by the set-off of the island, a thing inconsequential in these proceedings, the line remains as it was established.

So thus far, an abatement, If it is to be had, must be posited upon a showing that the petitioner, being liable to assessment, is overrated in the sense of an overestlmation; of a rating of its property above its true value, Penobscot, etc., Co. v. Bradley, 99 Me. 263, 59 Atl. 83, of being valued too highly, Webster's Diet.; "Sir, you o'errate my poor kindness," Shak., Cymbeline, 1, IV, 40.

The appellant owns a dam across the Kennebec river, between the towns of Benton and Fairfield, together with the bed of the river on which it is erected, and the land at either end against which it abuts. This dam, built of concrete in 1912-13, creates a head, in an average flow of 20 feet; throwing back the water for a distance of 10 miles, and draining a watershed 4,250 square miles in area. The banks of the river are high and steep some of the way, though "in places they are a little shoal," "but usually higher than the ordinary water level," consequently the flooding is comparatively little. The development, when the river is neither appreciably shrunken by droughts nor swollen by freshets, approximates 6,000 horse power. The energy finds application in generating electricity on the western or Fairfield side, none being used in Benton.

The Benton assessors set the valuation at $75,000, on "that part of (appellant's) privilege water right and dam in Benton bounded as follows: On the north, east and south by land of the company; * * * on the west by the Fairfield town line."

The obligation of showing adequate reason for changing the existing order of things rests upon the appellant. It must prove enough at least to make a prima facie case before it can be entitled to have its appeal sustained. There is not, in the record, any evidence showing that the property stands of valuation on the assessment book for more than its actual worth. There is evidence that the cost of building the Benton part was, in round numbers, $50,000, without the worth of the land on which it is built, and the water-covered land behind it, and the bank next it. Witnesses say that, since its building, the structure has appreciated rather than depreciated in value, due to the hardening and strengthening of the cement, the attendant element of indefinite life, and the actual demonstration of the dam's capacity to hold in check the mighty waters of the severest floods ever known to fall upon the basin supplying its reserve of stored force. And there is evidence that increase for labor and materials would make the cost of reproduction double that originally incurred.

It appears, too, that heretofore the official valuation was of lesser amount. But, being inadmissible, this must be allowed to flow by, like surplus water through the dam's wasteweir and over its crown. Boards of assessors come into existence annually in the several towns in virtue of a delegation of choosing power by the Legislature. These boards go on in the discharge of duty as each sees it to do amid changing conditions. And valuations, in resemblance to values, are chameleon-like things, varying from time to time, with regard to the objects about...