Dexter v. City of Boston
| Decision Date | 22 May 1900 |
| Parties | DEXTER v. CITY OF BOSTON. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
John Lowell and H. H. Darling, for plaintiff.
Samuel M. Child, for defendant.
In its essential features, this case is like Weed v. City of Boston, 172 Mass. 28, 51 N.E. 204, 42 L. R. A. 642, in which it was held that St. 1892 c. 402, is unconstitutional, in its requirement that all expenses incurred in the making of a sewer in a highway or strip of land or other place in the city of Boston, to an amount not exceeding four dollars for each lineal foot of sewer, shall be repaid to the city, as the assessable cost of the work, by the owners of the several parcels of land bordering on the highway or strip of land in which the sewer is made, and in its direction that this assessable cost shall be apportioned to each parcel in proportion to the number of lineal feet which it measures on said highway or strip of land. It is now settled law in this court, as it is in the supreme court of the United States and in many other courts that after the construction of a public improvement a local assessment for the cost of it cannot be laid upon real estate, in substantial excess of the benefit received by the property. Such assessments must be founded on the benefits and be proportional to the benefits. So far as there is anything in the early cases which seems at variance with this doctrine, it is controlled by the later decisions. Sears v. Board, 173 Mass. 71, 53 N.E. 138, 43 L. R. A. 834; Same v. Commissioners, 173 Mass. 351, 53 N.E. 876; City of Boston v. Boston & A. R. Co., 170 Mass. 95 49 N.E. 95; Weed v. City of Boston, supra; Norwood v Baker, 172 U.S. 269, 19 S.Ct. 187, 43 L.Ed. 443. The principle involved has been so recently and so fully considered in the cases above cited, that it is unnecessary to discuss it at length in this opinion. It was shown in Weed v. City of Boston that as applied to the facts of that case, and of many supposable cases, the requirements of the statute might produce assessments upon some estates greatly in excess of the benefits received, and, as compared with other estates, greatly disproportionate to the benefits. For this reason the statute was declared unconstitutional. In determining whether a statute is unconstitutional, the question is not whether the result is harmful in the particular case, but whether the statute, according to its terms, will violate the provisions of the constitution in its application to cases which may be expected to arise. The case then before the court furnished a demonstration of the injustice and deprivation of constitutional rights which might result from the enforcement of the statute. The present case illustrates in a similar way that the assessments on different lands made under this statute are not always proportional to the benefits. There is a great difference in value on account of the difference in grade between lands at different points along the line of the sewer, and there is the same kind of question that was referred to in Weed v. City of Boston in regard to an assessment upon land on the southerly side of Ashford street, so called, where there is intervening land in private ownership between the strip taken in the private way called 'Ashford Street' and the parcel on which the assessment was made. There is also an important fact which was wanting in the other case, namely, that the sewer turns at right angles where it enters Ashford street, and runs on two sides of the parcel at the corner. As the assessment was required to be...
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