Brown v. United States United States v. Brown

• Decision Date: 12 November 1923
• Docket Number: Nos. 97,98,s. 97
• Citation: Brown v. United States United States v. Brown, 263 U.S. 78, 44 S.Ct. 92, 68 L.Ed. 171 (1923)
• Parties: BROWN et al. v. UNITED STATES. UNITED STATES v. BROWN et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

263 U.S. 78

44 S.Ct. 92

68 L.Ed. 171

BROWN et al.

v UNITED STATES.

UNITED STATES

v. BROWN et al.

Nos. 97, 98.

Argued Oct. 19, 1923.

Decided Nov. 12, 1923.

Mr. J. H. Peterson, of Pocatello, Idaho, for Brown and another.

Mr. W. W. Dyar, of Washington, D. C., for the United States.

Mr. Chief Justice TAFTdelivered the opinion of the Court.

These are cross-writs of error to a judgment of the District Court of Idaho in a condemnation case.The plaintiffs in error are owners of a tract of 120 acres, which was the object of the suit by the United States.The jury rendered a verdict of $6,250 for the plaintiffs, and the court added $328 as interest at 7 per cent., from the date of the issuing of the summons to that of the judgment.The plaintiffs denied the power of the Congress under the federal Constitution to condemn the land, because not taken for a public use.This entitled them to come to this court under section 238 of the Judicial Code(Comp. St. § 1215); and so the United States sued out a cross-writ of error to question the legality of including in the judgment the interest item.

Plaintiffs' tract lies just outside the present limits of American Falls in Idaho.The town has 1,500 people and is so situate in the valley of the Snake river that three-fourths of the town, or 640 acres, will be flooded by the waters of a reservoir which the United States proposes to create, for irrigation of its arid public land, by damming the waters of the river.

The Sundry Civil Act of March 4, 1921(41 Stat. 1367, 1403) appropriates $1,735,000 in addition to an unexpended balance for the continuation of the construction and extension of the irrigation system called the Minidoka Project,

'with authority in connection with the construction of American Falls reservoir to purchase or condemn and to improve suitable land for a new town site to replace the portion of the town of American Falls which will be flooded by the reservoir and to provide for the removal of buildings to such new site and to plat and to provide for appraisal of lots in such new town site, and to exchange and convey such lots in full or part payment for property to be flooded by the reservoir, and to sell for not less than the appraised valuation any lots not used for such exchange.'

The United States has purchased 410 acres for the new town site and needs 165 acres more of which plaintiffs' tract of 120 acres is part.Negotiations for purchase from the plaintiffs failed, as they demanded $24,000.

The plaintiffs contend that the power of eminent domain does not extend to the taking of one man's property to sell it to another, that such an object cannot be regarded as for a public use of the property, and, without this, appropriation can have no constitutional validity.The District Court held that the acquisition of the town site was so closely connected with the acquisition of the district to be flooded and so necessary to the carrying out of the project that the public use of the reservoir covered the taking of the town site.We concur in this view.

The circumstances of this case are peculiar.An important town stood in the way of a necessary improvement by the United States.Three-quarters of its streets, alleys, and parks, and of its buildings, public and private, would have to be abandoned.The buildings could not be moved, except to the gradually rising ground east of the Snake river.There was a bluff 100 feet high on the other side of the river.The tract of 475 acres selected for the new town site was the only practical and available place to which the part of the town to be flooded could be moved, so as to be united with the one-quarter of the old town which would be left.American Falls is a large settlement for that sparsely settled country, and it was many miles from a town of any size in any direction.It was a natural and proper part of the construction of the dam and reservoir to make provision for a substitute town as near as possible to the old one.

No one would say that a legislative act authorizing a railway company to build a railroad exceeds the constitutional limit by reason of a specific provision that the company may condemn land not only for the right of way, but also additional land adjacent thereto for use as borrow pits in making fills and embankments, or for use as spoil banks or dumps for the earth excavated from tunnels and cuts.Such adjacent land would certainly be devoted to the public use for which the railway was being constructed.If so, then the purchase of a townsite on which to put the people and buildings of a town that have to be ousted to make the bed of a reservoir would seem to be equally within the constitutional warrant.The purchase of a site to which the buildings of the town can be moved and salvaged, and the dispossessed owners be given lots in exchange for their old ones, is a reasonable adaptation of proper means toward the end of the public use to which the reservoir is to be devoted?The transaction is not properly described as the condemnation of the land of one private owner to sell it to another.The incidental fact that in the substitution and necessary adjustment of the exchanges, a mere residuum of the town site lots may have to be sold does not change the real nature of what is done, which is that of a mere transfer of the town from one place to another at the expense of the United States.The usual and ordinary method of condemnation of the lots in the old town, and of the streets and alleys as town property, would be ill adapted to the exigency.It would be hard to fix a proper value of homes in a town thus to be destroyed, without prospect of their owners' finding homes similarly situate on streets in another part of the same town, or in another town near at hand.It would be difficult to place a proper estimate of the value of the streets and alleys to be destroyed and not to be restored in kind.A town is a business center.It is a unit.If three-quarters of it is to be destroyed by appropriating it to an exclusive use like a reservoir, all property owners, both those ousted and those in the remaining quarter, as well as the state, whose subordinate agency of government is the munici pality are injured.A method of compensation by substitution would seem to be the best means of making the parties whole.The power of condemnation is necessary to such a substitution.

The circumstances of this case are so peculiar that it would not be surprising if no precedent could be found to aid us as an authority.There is one, however, which presents a somewhat close analogy.In Pitznogle v. Western Maryland R. R. Co., 119 Md. 673, 87 Atl. 917, 46 L. R. A. (N. S.) 319, a railroad company condemned a piece of land for its tracks and yards, and in doing so appropriated a private right of way, which was the only access of certain other landowners to the public highway.It was held that the railway company could condemn an additional strip of land for a substitute right of way to be furnished to these landowners.In reaching this conclusion the court said:

'The condemnation of a part of this land, here sought to be condemned, for a substitute private road or way is incident to and results from the taking, by reason of public necessity, of the existing private road for public use, and the use of it for such purposes should, we think, be regarded as a public use within the meaning of the Constitution.'

Our conclusion is not in conflict with that class of cases with which the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts dealt in the Opinion of Justices, 204 Mass. 607, 91 N. E. 405, 27 L. R. A. (N. S.) 483.It was there proposed that the city of Boston, in building a street through a crowded part of the city, should be given power to condemn lots abutting on both sides of the proposed street, with a view to sale of them after the improvement was made for the promotion of the erection of warehouses, mercantile establishments, and other buildings suited to the...