Lackland v. North Missouri R.R. Co.
| Citation | 31 Mo. 180 |
| Parties | LACKLAND, Respondent, v. NORTH MISSOURI RAILROAD COMPANY, Appellant. |
| Decision Date | 31 October 1860 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Missouri |
1. The grant to a railroad company of a right of way merely over a public street in a city or town will not authorize the placing of any obstructions in the street such as will render it useless as a street; for the purpose of establishing depots, depot yards or other structures for the convenience or business of the railroad company, ground must be procured not already dedicated to uses inconsistent with such purpose.
2. The grant to a city of a power to “open, alter, abolish, widen, extend, establish, grade, or otherwise improve and keep in repair streets” would not authorize an appropriation of a street to such uses as would be entirely inconsistent with its use as a street.
3. The right of the owner of a lot in a town or city to the use of the adjoining street is as much property as the lot itself; the owner of the lot can not be deprived of this right by the obstruction of the street without compensation. It is immaterial in such case whether the owner of the lot owns to the middle of the street or not.
Appeal from St. Charles Circuit Court.
The facts sufficiently appear in the opinion of the court.
Lewis, Wells, and Wickham, for appellant.
I. The court erred in giving and refusing instructions. There was no injury to or interference with the soil owned by the plaintiff. Plaintiff is not entitled to recover for loss or injury consequent upon a proper use by another of the adjoining soil. Even if plaintiff had an ownership to the middle of the street, yet the street being still in the hands of the public as a common easement, the mere hindrance of the public in the enjoyment of such easement could be no injury to plaintiff's reversionary fee. The city authorities had full power under their charter to grant the right of way to defendant. The use of the street by defendant for the purposes of its railroad was authorized by legislative enactment in the charter of the defendant. The act of the legislature is valid and constitutional. No vested rights are interfered with unless it be those of the public. The whole scope and spirit of the instructions given for plaintiff are based upon this error, that a private individual can recover damages for injury or inconvenience which, if sustained at all, are shared by him in common with the public at large. Such actions can never be maintained except on the ground of some direct injury which has peculiarly affected the plaintiff, and which is no part or parcel of the public wrong involved in the same transaction. The obstruction of the highway, if unauthorized, is purely a public wrong. The diminution in value of plaintiff's lot is not such a special and peculiar damage as will bring plaintiff within the exception. The power to grant right of way along a street must reside in either the legislature, the corporate authorities of the city, or the owners of the adjacent lots. If it resides in either of the two first mentioned, then the acts of defendant were lawfully authorized and plaintiff was not entitled to recover. It does not reside in the owner of the adjacent lot. He has no greater interest in the street than any member of the community. His property is not required to be taken for the public benefit. In this case, plaintiff can not be considered as owning the soil in the street. The legal presumption of ownership to the middle of the street, which has been asserted by some of the eastern authorities, will not be recognized here. If plaintiff does own to the middle of the street, still he is not the proper party to be looked to for a grant of the right of way. As such owner, he has only a reversionary right to the soil after it shall cease to be a street. In this case the street still remains a street; the complaint made is for an obstruction of the public easement; for any abuse of the grant the defendant is liable to the public.
H. C. Lackland, for respondent.
I. The court committed no error in giving and refusing instructions. The grant of the right of way by the legislature and city council does not exclude the idea that the proprietor adjoining the street should have compensation for any injury he may sustain by converting a common street into a railroad track. (21 Mo. 25.) The company, after getting the consent of the state and city, should have condemned the right of way. The grant of the right of way did not justify the defendant in the acts complained of. The street is so obstructed that it can no longer be used as a street. The plaintiff is the owner of the soil to the middle of the street; this ownership is subject only to the easement of the public as a common highway. He has a special property in the street as a highway. This property is distinct from and independent of the ownership of the soil in the street. It can not be interfered with without a regular condemnation and compensation. The charter gives the city no power to authorize such an obstruction of the street.
This case does not involve the question whether a railroad, in a street of an incorporated town or city, is of itself such an obstruction to it or such a perversion of it from its original purposes as to furnish a ground of action to the proprietor of adjoining lots. That question has been the subject of discussion and decision in several of the courts of the United States, but the decisions have not been altogether uniform, and the law upon the subject can not be regarded as fully settled. Angell, in his work on Highways, after a reference to most of the cases, expresses the opinion that, at the date of his work, the weight of authority was, that such roads are not necessarily nuisances, but might be so regulated and conducted as to be properly considered an improved mode of using the public easement. (Angell on Highways, 224.) In the work of Judge Redfield on Railways, a dissatisfaction with the current of American decisions on this point is intimated, and a belief is expressed that these modern improvements upon highways and streets, however desirable and valuable in the main to the public, are yet such material changes of the public easement as, upon principles of reason and justice, should be attended with compensation to the proprietors of lands and lots adjoining the streets or highways. (Redfield on Railways, 160.) It is not necessary, in this case, that we should express any opinion on the point, for it is quite obvious that the case did not turn upon it.
By an ordinance of the city authorities of St. Charles, passed October 15, 1855, it was enacted that “the right of way through Main street up to a point one hundred feet north of the point of intersection of Clark and Main streets be and is hereby granted to the North Missouri Railroad Company, upon said company complying with the requisition made in the report of the committee appointed to take into consideration the request of said company.” The consideration of this grant to the railroad company appears, from the reports made to the corporation, to have been their construction of various improvements upon other streets of the city, the cost of which amounted to several thousand dollars, and there is no dispute that the company performed her part of the contract.
All the acts done by the railroad company, upon that part of Main street lying immediately adjacent to the plaintiff's lot, were done by virtue of the supposed authority conferred on the company by this ordinance, and it is upon this ordinance that they rely for a justification.
The proofs upon the trial, in conformity to the allegations of the petition, showed very clearly what the railroad corporation had done; and the question is, whether their acts are warranted by the grant of way from the city of St. Charles. If they are not, then the defendant...
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