Graff v. City of Casper, 2748

• Decision Date: 02 January 1957
• Docket Number: No. 2748,2748
• Parties: A. C. GRAFF, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. The CITY OF CASPER, a Municipal Corporation, Defendant and Appellant, and Mary Catherine Walczak and M. J. Walczak, Defendants.
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Page 1074

304 P.2d 1074

76 Wyo. 440

A. C. GRAFF, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. The CITY OF CASPER, a Municipal Corporation, Defendant and Appellant, and Mary Catherine Walczak and M. J. Walczak, Defendants.

No. 2748.

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

Jan. 2, 1957.

Marvin L. Bishop and Houston G. Williams, Casper, for appellant.

Edward E. Murane and Donald E. Chapin, Casper, for respondent.

Mr. Chief Justice BLUME delivered the opinion of the Court.

The present case is here for the second time. The original decision in this case appears in Graff v. City of Casper, 73 Wyo. 486, 281 P.2d 685. In that case we directed the trial court to award to the city of Casper the so-called 'east part' of the strip of land in controversy, and to award to the plaintiff Graff the so-called 'west part' thereof.

On December 19, 1955, the trial court awarded to the city of Casper only the east 347.67 feet of the strip in controversy, and to the plaintiff Graff the remainder. The city has appealed from the judgment, contending that the trial court did not carry out the direction of this court. With that we agree.

The trial court in its original decision had considered only the actual occupancy by the city of part of Fifteenth Street, and so was logical enough in granting to the plaintiff the whole strip in controversy subject only to an easement of the city in the strip of ground from South Wolcott Street to the manhole, some 347.67 feet west of that street. The trial court in its present judgment persists in carrying out its original idea notwithstanding we had disagreed with that idea and did not confine our conclusions to the same narrow compass as did the trial court. This we think is clear from our former decision. The bearing which the construction of the storm sewer had upon the matter was merely one of the factors we considered. We may have been somewhat misled into stating in our original opinion that the storm sewer was laid all along the traveled street, but when a petition for rehearing called our attention to that fact, we concluded that this should not result in changing our conclusion, for the obvious reason that it was not reasonable that the city wanted and the owner of the ground expected the city to have only a cul-de-sac, leaving travelers upon the street with no way to travel the area from the manhole to the so-called circular connecting street or the reverse.

In the original case we held that the previous owners of the land in controversy had...