Chicago & N.P.R. Co. v. City of Chicago

• Decision Date: 14 February 1898
• Citation: 49 N.E. 1006,172 Ill. 66
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court
• Parties: CHICAGO & N. P. R. CO. v. CITY OF CHICAGO.

172 Ill. 66

49 N.E. 1006

CHICAGO & N. P. R. CO.

v.CITY OF CHICAGO.¹

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Feb. 14, 1898.

Appeal from Cook county court; W. F. Hodson, Judge.

Proceedings for the confirmation of a special assessment in the city of Chicago. The assessment was confirmed over the objections of the Chicago & Northern Pacific Railroad Company, and it appeals. Affirmed.K. K. Knapp and Mark Breeden, Jr., for appellant.

Charles S. Thornton, Corp. Counsel, and William H. Sexton, Asst. Corp. Counsel, for appellee.

CRAIG, J.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the county court of Cook county confirming a special assessment levied by the city of Chicago for the purpose of improving Ashland avenue from the south line of Twenty-Second street to the north line of the South branch of the Chicago river, in the city of Chicago. The Chicago & Northern Pacific Railroad Company filed objections in the county court to the confirmation of the report of the commissioners. By agreement, a jury was waived, and the cause was submitted to the court. The court, on the hearing, found that appellant's property was not assessed more or less than it would be benefited, nor more or less than its proportionate share of the cost of the improvement. All objections interposed were overruled and assessment confirmed. From that judgment the railroad company appeals.

Section 1 of the ordinance, among other things, contains the following: ‘That a local improvement shall be made within the city of Chicago, county of Cook and state of Illinois, the nature, character, locality and description of which local improvement is as follows: That the roadway of Ashland avenue from the south line of Twenty-Second street to the north line of the South branch of the Chicago river in said city of Chicago, said curbstones being sixty feet in width, be and the same is hereby ordered curbed with the best quality of limestone curbstones, said curbstones to be four feet long, three feet deep and five inches in thickness, with top edge full and square. Each curbstone to have a straight base the whole length and to be firmly bedded upon flat stones. Each curbstone to be bush hammered on the top surface and for a space of twelve inches down from the top. Said curbstone to be set on either side of the roadway of said Ashland avenue between said points (except across the roadway of intersecting streets and alleys) at and on a line parallel with and thirty feet from the center of line of said roadway.’ It is said in the argument that the clause in the ordinance in reference to the location of the curbstones is indefinite and uncertain; that it nowhere provides that they shall be set on both sides of the roadway. In Webster's definition of the word ‘either‘ will be found the following: ‘(2) Each of two; the one and the other.’ Under this definition, the language of the ordinance, ‘said curbstones to be set on either side of the roadway,’ would require them to be set on both sides. Indeed, the language used in the first part of the section, requiring the roadway 60 feet on the north to be curbed, shows plainly enough that it was intended by the provisions of the ordinance that both sides of the roadway should be curbed. It is unreasonable to suppose that the city council would require one side of a street to be curbed, and...