Chicago, M. & S.P. Ry. Co. v. Monona County

• Decision Date: 20 October 1909
• Citation: 122 N.W. 820,144 Iowa 171
• Parties: CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE & ST. PAUL RAILWAY COMPANY, Appellants, v. MONONA COUNTY AND OTHERS, Appellees
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

122 N.W. 820

144 Iowa 171

CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE & ST. PAUL RAILWAY COMPANY, Appellants, v. MONONA COUNTY AND OTHERS, Appellees

Supreme Court of Iowa, Des Moines

October 20, 1909

Appeal from Monona District Court.--HON. F. R. GAYNOR, Judge.

THE plaintiff appeals from the judgment of the district court affirming an assessment made against it for benefits alleged to have accrued to its road or right of way by the improvement of a drainage district.--Affirmed.

Decree affirmed.

Shull. Farnsworth & Sammis, for appellant.

J. W Anderson, for appellees.

OPINION

WEAVER, J.

The plaintiff's line of railway crosses the drainage district and intersects therein twenty-five different forty-acre tracts. The commissioners appointed for that purpose assessed the benefit of the drainage system to said railroad at $ 182.47, distributing the same upon the road in the several forty-acre tracts in sums varying from fifty-five cents to $ 19.50, according to the classification adopted by said commissioners. At the hearing before the board of supervisors upon the commissioners' report, the railway company appeared by counsel, and objected to the assessments made upon its property, assigning the following grounds therefor: "(1) That said railway company has no land in such drainage benefited by the location and construction of the proposed drainage ditch. (2) That the commissioners appointed by this board have not described the property of this railway company according to any legal or recognized subdivision. (3) That the said commissioners' assessment against this company is not an equitable apportionment of the cost, expense, cost of construction, fees, and damages for such improvement. (4) That the said commissioners have classified the property of said railway company in said matter as high as ninety percent, whereas the only property of said railway company is its right of way, and a railroad right of way would be the least benefited of any property in said drainage district. (5) That the said property in said drainage district of said railway company consists of an easement over the land and right of way for the construction of a roadbed and the operation of railroad trains thereon and such right of way is not benefited at all, and, if so, it is the least benefited of any property in said drainage district, and should take the lowest per cent. classification of any property in said district. (6) That no legal classification or assessment has been made. (7) That the property of said company is not described according to its legal or recognized subdivisions, as required by law, upon which said assessment and classification has been made, and that such description of said company's property so attempted to be assessed and classified is too indefinite and uncertain to make said classification and assessment legal. (8) That the amount assessed against the property of said railway company is disproportionate and inequitable as to other property in said drainage district." After hearing the evidence in support of said objections, the board overruled the same, and confirmed and established the assessment as made and reported by the commissioners. Thereafter and in due time the company appealed from said order to the district court, stating in its notice that it deemed itself aggrieved by the assessment of $ 182.47 and by the action of the board of supervisors in refusing to reclassify the lands or reduce or annul the assessment thereon, and in approving and affirming the report of the commissioners. The evidence introduced upon appeal in addition to the record of the proceedings in establishing the drainage district and in assessing the benefits therefrom was principally of an expert character by engineers as to the topography of the district adjacent to the right of way and the benefit or lack of benefit arising from said improvement to the railway property. The district court reaffirmed the assessment complained of and the railway company appeals to this court.

I. The first and chief contention of the appellant in its argument to this court is that the commissioners erred in attempting to classify the railroad right of way, and assessing the benefits to the same in parcels or fractions, and not to the railway property within the district as an entirety, and on this proposition we are cited to In re Johnson Drainage District, 141 Iowa 380, 118 N.W. 380, where it was held that the statute does not contemplate the classification and assessment of a railroad right of way in like manner as agricultural lands are dealt with in drainage proceedings and that a ditch tax or assessment was not made invalid because "assessed in a lump sum on the entire holding."...