Manufacturers' Land & Improvement Co. v. Bd. of Commerce & Navigation

• Decision Date: 26 June 1923
• Citation: 121 A. 337
• Parties: MANUFACTURERS' LAND & IMPROVEMENT CO. v. BOARD OF COMMERCE & NAVIGATION et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

121 A. 337

MANUFACTURERS' LAND & IMPROVEMENT CO.

v. BOARD OF COMMERCE & NAVIGATION et al.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

June 26, 1923.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Certiorari by the Manufacturers' Land & Improvement Company against the Board of Commerce & Navigation and the Southwark Manufacturing Company, to review the issuance of riparian grants. Resolution set aside.

Argued June term, 1923, before TRENCHARD, PARKER, and BERGEN, JJ.

Samuel B. Scott, of Philadelphia, Pa. (Wescott & Weaver, of Camden, on the brief), for prosecutor.

Harrison P. Lindabury, of Newark (Thomas F. McCran, Atty. Gen., on the brief), for defendant Board.

Patrick H. Harding, of Camden, for Southwark Mfg. Co.

PARKER, J. Prosecutor is the owner of a tract of land in Camden, bordering on the east side of the Delaware river, and claims the usual rights of a riparian owner under the laws of this state. Adjoining prosecutor's lands on the south are lands of the Southwark Manufacturing Company, and adjoining that company's land on the south, and bounded southerly by the north line of Jefferson street, actual or produced, is a tract belonging to the Armstrong Cork Company. Both these companies hold under the prosecutor, directly or by mesne conveyances.

The attack made under the writ of certiorari in this case relates to proposed riparian grants by the board of commerce and navigation to the Armstrong and Southwark Companies, especially to the latter; prosecutor's claim being that the intended grant to the Southwark Company includes land lying "in front of" prosecutor's lands in the sense intended by the statutes relating to riparian rights (C. S. 4382 et seq.) and that such proposed grant is unwarranted by law, first, because the title of all the parties to the tracts above mentioned is derived from grants by the state to the prosecutor wherein the state covenanted not to grant or lease to any other person or corporation in front of the land described; and, secondly, because of the statutory provision (C. S. 4395, pi. 38) that a lease or grant to any other than the shore owner is to be made only after six months notice to such owner, during which time he has the prior option to take out the grant himself. As a matter of fact, all three corporations have applied for grants to a new pier line, and the practical as well as the legal question is with respect to the location and amount of land under water to be granted to each. The board, before executing the three grants (which are still undelivered) consulted counsel, who advised, among other things, that, although the three tracts in respect of which these owners seek riparian grants to the new line established further out in the river, are themselves held under a former riparian grant to the prosecutor, who improved and filled in and resold in part, yet for the purpose of dealing with the additional grants now in question, said tracts should be considered to have the status of original ripa. This view is not questioned by either side, and we are content to accept it for the purposes of this case.

The dispute comes about in this way: Prosecutor, in selling off parts of its original large grant, adopted a layout in which the side lines of the river front tracts did not run parallel. This may have been caused by the fact that the former exterior pier line does not run normally to the layout of the Camden streets, but at an angle of about 20 degrees, so that, taking Jefferson street as running east and west (which is substantially correct), the pier line runs about north 20 degrees west, and the new pier line nearly, but not quite, parallel with it and about 75 feet further out. The side lines of the Armstrong Company run, as we have said, parallel with Jefferson street; those of the prosecutor run about at right angles to the water front; so that the side lines of the Southwark Company converge as they approach the river, and...