Currie v. Waverly & N. Y. B. R. Co.

• Citation: 52 N.J.L. 381,20 A. 56
• Parties: CURRIE v. WAVERLY & N. Y. B. R. Co.
• Decision Date: 21 June 1890
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

20 A. 56

52 N.J.L. 381

CURRIE

v. WAVERLY & N. Y. B. R. Co.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

June 21, 1890.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to circuit court, Hudson county; before Justice KNAPP.

Randolph, Condit & Black, for plaintiff in error. Vredenburgh & Garretson, for defendant in error.

GARRISON, J. This writ of error brings up the circuit record of an issue tried upon an appeal from the award of commissioners appointed to condemn the lands of Mungo J. Currie, upon the application of the Waverly & New York Bay Railroad Company. The land-owner is the plaintiff in error. The land taken for railroad purposes is a strip 100 feet in width and 770 feet in length, lying near, but not fronting upon, New York bay. The strip in question is part of a tract of several acres belonging to the same owner. This tract had been plotted by its owner into town lots, and delineated upon a map, showing streets and avenues. In 1885 lots were offered at public sale by this map, but no lots abutting upon the avenues adjacent to the strip in question have been sold. The route selected by the railroad runs parallel with, and in immediate adjacency to, an avenue marked upon this map as "Fifty-Second Street." The block upon which the route is located is bounded upon this map by Fifty-Second street upon one side, and by Fifty-Third street upon the other, and is the only block any portion of which is actually taken by the railroad. In this situation of affairs the jury were instructed by the trial court that the damages to be awarded to the land-owner must be limited to the particular block a portion of which, as shown upon the map, was actually taken, unless it appeared from the evidence that the owner was using that block in common with the rest of his lands for a single use. In explaining this instruction to the jury the court used two illustrations. The jury was told that if the owner had a factory that covered three or four of these blocks, and was using that factory as an entirety, then the block taken would not be the limit for assessing damages. The other illustration was that of a farmer, who, having mapped his farm into blocks, continued to cultivate it as a unit.

The propriety of the rule of damages thus laid down is the subject of a specific exception to the judge's charge.

It is an established rule of law in proceedings for condemnation of land that the just compensation which the land-owner is entitled to receive for his lands, and damages thereto, must be limited to the tract a portion of which is actually taken. The propriety of this rule is quite apparent. It is solely by virtue of his ownership of the tract invaded that the owner is entitled to incidental damages. His ownership of other lands is without legal significance. Within the tract thus owned his rights are twofold—First, he is to be paid the value of the land included in the petition of the condemning agent; and, secondly, he is entitled to an award of such damages as result to the residue of his tract. In the application of this rule no practical difficulty can arise where the tract is bounded by the lands of others. The difficulty, in so far as it has arisen hitherto, is in those cases in which the owner of several blocks of land, separated from each other by public highways, has claimed compensation for land taken in one block, and also incidental damages to his adjacent parcels. The question thus presented is said to have been decided adversely to the claim of the land-owner in the Case of the New York Cent. R. Co., 6 Hun, 149. That case decides that in the city of New York blocks of building lots are separate tracts, and that no tract can be regarded as incidentally injured, save only the particular one out of which the land required by the railroad company is in fact taken. The value of this case as an authority upon the point under consideration is, however, greatly impaired, if not altogether destroyed, by the fact that by virtue of an act of the legislature of New York, passed in 1813, the fee to the streets and other public lands in the city of New York is vested in the municipality. Kellinger v. Railroad Co., 50 N. Y. 206. For obvious reasons, this case furnishes no controlling principle applicable to those jurisdictions in which an owner may assert absolute continuity of title to abutting lands lying upon opposite sides of a public highway. Salter v. Jones, 39 N. J. Law, 469; Railroad Co. v. Ayers, 50 N. J. Law, 660, 14 Atl. Rep. 901; Ayres v. Railroad Co., ante, 54. Indeed, a contrary view obtained recognition in the supreme court of this state in the case of Railroad Co. v. Doughty, 22 N. J. Law, 495. The present case, however, does not call for a decision upon this point. The question now before us is not what would be the rule of damages where the owner's tractis actually subdivided by public highways, but whether the delineation of proposed subdivisions upon a map shall have the effect of limiting incidental damages to a particular block shown upon such map. The question thus presented is quite apart from the rights which a vendee purchasing by such map acquires against his vendor. As the case comes before us, there is nothing actually upon the ground, nor is there anything constructively in the conduct of the owner, to break the previous unity of his title over his entire tract. The fee in the lands marked "streets" upon the map, which would have remained in him even if an easement had actually attached, is as yet in him, unsubjected to any burden which an invading corporation can set up as the legal limit of the territory over which the rule of resulting damages may extend. IE damages are to be confined to a small parallelogram of land out of a tract of many acres similarly, although not equally, injured, it must be either because the land thus selected is in fact a separate tract, or because, by virtue of some rule of law, it must be so regarded. In the present case neither of these conditions exist. The instruction, therefore, that the owner's damages must be limited to a particular block delineated upon his map, unless he could by evidence show an actual and contra user, was giving to the mere act of plotting the land upon paper an effect in excess of its legal import. The presumption of law thus assumed threw upon the owner of the lands a burden of proof which must be regarded as injurious to his property rights. For the correction of this error there must be a new trial.

A further question is presented upon this record. Upon the trial of the appeal a line of proof was offered by the land-owner which was overruled, and a bill of exceptions allowed. The offer was to prove, in respect to the lands taken, a number of matters tending to show that it possessed a special value for railroad purposes generally, irrespective of its individual advantages to the defendant in error. Some of the...