In re South Shilshole Place

• Decision Date: 16 December 1910
• Citation: 112 P. 228,61 Wash. 246
• Parties: In re SOUTH SHILSHOLE PLACE. v. CITY OF SEATTLE. ROBINSON et ux.
• Court: Washington Supreme Court

112 P. 228

61 Wash. 246

In re SOUTH SHILSHOLE PLACE.

ROBINSON et ux. v. CITY OF SEATTLE.

Supreme Court of Washington

December 16, 1910

Department 1. Appeal from Superior Court, King County; R. B. Albertson Judge.

In the matter of the laying off, etc., of South Shilshole Place in the City of Seattle. W. W. Robinson, Jr., and wife filed objections to an assessment of benefits, and from a judgment confirming the assessment, they appeal. Reversed, with directions.

Todd Wilson & Thorgrimson, for appellants.

Scott Calhoun and King Dykeman, for respondent.

GOSE, J.

The city of Seattle, by ordinance, provided for the laying off extending and establishing of South Shilshole Place, Emerson street and an unnamed street, as public streets, and for condemning five detached tracts of land for that purpose. The ordinance provided that an assessment should be made upon the property benefited, for the purpose of compensating the owners of the property taken, and for the costs of the proceeding, in the manner provided by law. Thereafter, in obedience to the provisions of the ordinance and the state, a jury trial was had for the purpose of ascertaining the just compensation to be made for the private property taken or damaged.

After the return of the verdict, a judgment was entered whereby it was decreed that, upon payment to the respective owners or into the registry of the court of the amount found by the jury and taxable costs of the proceeding, the city should be entitled to the possession of the land taken. Damages in the sum of $2,850 were awarded to the appellants. The appellants are the owners of a tract of unplatted land through which Shilshole Place is sought to be extended. The board of eminent domain commissioners, to whom the matter was referred, prepared and filed an assessment roll for the purpose of creating a fund with which to pay the damages awarded, and the costs and expenses of the proceedings. The appellants in due time filed written objections to the assessment. This appeal was taken from a judgment confirming the assessment.

Three questions are presented. It is asserted (1) that the ordinance contains more than one subject, and that it therefore conflicts with section 10, art. 4, of the city charter; (2) that the assessment contains items of costs that cannot be assessed to the property; and (3) that the court erred in refusing to admit testimony in regard to the probable court to be made upon the appellants' property. These questions will be treated in the order stated.

The appellants were parties to the condemnation proceeding, and did not raise the question that the ordinance was duplicitous. A valid ordinance was a prerequisite to the right to condemn. It would seem that the point was, at that hearing, decided aversely to the present contention, and that the decree of necessity foreclosed a further hearing upon that ground. However, assuming that the question is open, under the authority of In re Third, Fourth, and Fifth Avenues, 49 Wash. 409, 94 P. 1075, 95 P. 862, we do not think that the objection is tenable. An examination of the maps in the record discloses that the purpose of the city in condemning the several strips of property was to create a connected way from the Lake Washington canal to Ft. Lawton. To accomplish this purpose, it was necessary to condemn five separate pieces of property lying from one-fourth to one-half a mile apart. It is, however, all involved in the one general plan, and creates a continuous but sinuous course between the termini. We think the ordinance embraces but a single object. Weed v. Goodwin, 36 Wash. 31, 78 P. 36; Seattle v. Sylvester-Cowen Inv. Co., 55 Wash. 659, 104 P. 1121.

In the Weed Case the title of the act was: 'An act providing for condemnation proceedings for right of way for irrigating ditches, canals, and flumes for agricultural and mining purposes and relating to right of appropriation of water.' Laws 1899, c. 131. It was contended that there was a union of two distinct objects, viz., one pertaining to the condemnation of the right of way, and the other pertaining to rights of persons engaged in irrigation to appropriate water. It was held that neither the title to the act nor the act itself is duplicitous, and that the act would have been valid under the less detailed title of: 'An act relating to the appropriation of water.' In the Sylvester Case a like objection was made to an ordinance entitled: 'An ordinance providing for the laying out, widening, extending and establishing of Meadow Place, University boulevard and East Seventieth street, as public streets, highways, boulevards and parkways in the city of Seattle, between East Green Lake boulevard and Fifteenth avenue northeast, over and across certain lots, blocks, tracts, and parcels of land in said city, and providing for the condemnation and appropriation to the public use as a park of certain other lands and premises adjoining and proximate thereto, and providing for the taking and damaging of land and other property necessary therefor. * * *' It was claimed that the ordinance provided for two separate and distinct objects: (1) The condemnation of certain property for streets, and (2) the condemnation of certain other property for a park. In that case we said: 'The charter provision does not forbid the lawmaking body from passing an ordinance having a general object, and it may bring within its scope any number of sub-subjects germane to the general subject. Whatever is legitimately connected with a unified subject may be embraced in a single title or act'--and that the ordinance was valid.

The appellants cite Weckler v. City of Chicago, 61 Ill 142, People v. Latham, 203 Ill. 9, 67 N.E. 403, and Arnold v. City of Cambridge, 106 Mass. 352. In the Weckler Case an ordinance was held invalid, in that it combined two distinct improvements which provided for widening an alley running north and south through a block, and for opening an alley running east and west through the same block to intersect with the alley running north and south. In the Latham Case, a later case from Illinois, an ordinance was held invalid which provided for the laying of more than 40 separate and disconnected sidewalks located on 25 different streets in the village of Willamette, and in diverse and widely separated parts of the village, aggregating about seven miles of cement sidewalk. It was held that the ordinance was in violation of the general law of the state which gave authority to villages to construct sidewalks. The court was considering the language of a special sidewalk statute. The case, however, in principle upholds the validity of the ordinance under consideration. Speaking of the question of the power of the city to unite one general scheme of improvement in a single ordinance, the court said: 'It is true that a single ordinance, providing for paving one or more streets, or providing for a system or common scheme for laying sewers, service pipes, or drains has been held by this court to be a valid and legal ordinance. Where, in such case, many streets and parts of streets have been embraced in the scheme of improvement adopted by the city, they have been all regarded as parts of the same improvement. But the cases were this rule has been announced, and where such double improvements made by a single ordinance have been indorsed and approved, have arisen under other provisions of the law than the sidewalk act of 1875. Thus, in City of Springfield v. Green, 120 Ill. 269, 11 N.E. 261, it was held that an ordinance for the paving of several streets and alleys and parts of streets with the same materials, and in the same way, was not obnoxious to the objection that it embraced more than one improvement. The principle announced in City of Springfield v. Green, supra, was applied to a system of sewerage in Drexel v. Town of Lake, 127 Ill. 54, 20 N.E. 38, and Village of Hinsdale v. Shannon, 182 Ill. 312, 55 N.E. 327, and Haley v. City of Alton, ...