Kansas City & Northern Connecting Railroad Co. v. Baker

• Decision Date: 30 May 1906
• Parties: KANSAS CITY & NORTHERN CONNECTING RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellant, v. BAKER et al
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

93 S.W. 1134

196 Mo. 583

KANSAS CITY & NORTHERN CONNECTING RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellant, v. BAKER et al

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division One

May 30, 1906

Appeal from DeKalb Circuit Court. -- Hon. A. D. Burnes, Judge.

Reversed and remanded (with directions).

J. G Trimble for appellant.

(1) The court should have sustained plaintiffs' motion to first take up and try the issue as to ownership of property. The Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company was satisfied with the award. If it should have been declared the owner of the property (as it afterwards was by the Supreme Court), there would have been no expensive trial, no double appeals of the case to the Supreme Court, and the trial would have been simplified very much. The anomaly of a judgment in favor of parties wholly without interest in the land, as now exists would have been prevented. (2) The judgment in this case requires the clerk of the court to pay over to Baker and Morse the $ 600 deposited by plaintiff, and orders same to be credited upon the judgment rendered in favor of said defendants. That much of the judgment has already been reversed by the decision in Railroad v. Baker, 183 Mo. 312. If this judgment be affirmed, it will present the anomaly of this court affirming a judgment already reversed and ordering money, already ordered by this court to be paid to the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company, paid to Baker and Morse who have no interest whatever in the land in controversy.

OPINION

GRAVES, J.

On October 30, 1899, the appellant, the Kansas City & Northern Connecting Railroad Company, instituted proceedings in the circuit court of DeKalb county to condemn the following described land, to-wit:

"A strip, tract or parcel of land situated in the village of Osborn in DeKalb county, Missouri, described as follows Beginning at the southwest corner of Clinton and Baker streets, and running west along the south side of Baker street, three hundred and twenty-five feet to the southeast corner of Baker and Hunt streets; thence south along the east side of Hunt street sixty-two feet, more or less, to the right of way of the Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad; thence southwesterly, and along the right of way of the Hannibal & St. Joseph railroad three hundred and twenty-six feet, more or less, to the west side of Clinton street; thence north along the west side of Clinton street eighty-three feet, more or less, to the point of beginning, containing fifty-four hundredths of an acre, more or less."

In this proceeding I. E. Morse, P. J. Householder, William H. Carr, Aaron Carr, Henry Baker and the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company were made defendants. The commissioners appointed by the judge of the circuit court, by their report filed with the clerk of said court, made a lumping award of damages in the sum of $ 600. This sum was deposited with the clerk of the circuit court by the plaintiff herein.

The defendant, the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad Company, filed no exceptions to the report of the commissioners, but filed a motion asking the court to make an order directing the clerk to...