Morris & Cummings Dredging Co. v. Mayor

• Decision Date: 18 June 1900
• Citation: 46 A. 609,64 N.J.L. 587
• Parties: MORRIS & CUMMINGS DREDGING CO. v. MAYOR ETC.. OF JERSEY CITY et al.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

46 A. 609

64 N.J.L. 587

MORRIS & CUMMINGS DREDGING CO.

v. MAYOR ETC.. OF JERSEY CITY et al.

Court of Errors and Appeals of New Jersey.

June 18, 1900.

(Syllabus by the Court.)

Error to supreme court.

On certiorari by the Morris & Cummings Dredging Company against the mayor and aldermen of Jersey City and the Greenville & Hudson Railway Company. Certain resolutions were set aside by the supreme court, and defendants bring error. Reversed.

Allan L. McDermott, for plaintiff in error Jersey City. Charles L. Corbin, for plaintiff in error Greenville & H. Ry. Co. Lindley M. Garrison, for defendant in error.

DIXON, J. Certain resolutions passed by the board of street and water commissioners of Jersey City on October 19, 1898, relating to Chapel avenue, were removed to the supreme court by writ of certiorari prosecuted by the Morris & Cummings Dredging Company, and were set aside by that court, whose judgment is now brought here for review. 45 Atl. 917.

The first question is whether the company had such an interest as entitled it to prosecute the certiorari. The proceedings of the board did not contemplate any direct interference with the lands of the company, or any change in the avenue where those lands abutted upon it, but the result of carrying out the proceedings might be deemed to have an injurious effect .upon the value of the lands by lessening the convenience of access to them. They were clearly so situated with regard to that portion of Chapel avenue which was to be altered in pursuance of the resolutions of the board that under appropriate legislation those lands might be subjected to assessments for special benefit, or their owner might be entitled to compensation for special damages, resulting from alterations there made. Whether the alterations intended would really have an injurious effect upon the value of the company's lands was a question of fact presented to the supreme court in allowing and in rendering final judgment upon the writ of certiorari, and the decision of that court upon the question is not subject to review here. Moran v. City of Jersey City, 58 N. J. Law, 653, 35 Atl. 950; Morris v. City of Bayonne, 62 N. J. Law, 385, 41 Atl. 924; Morris & E. R. Co. v. Mayor, etc., of City of Newark, 63 N. J. Law, 310, 43 Atl. 691. Assuming the fact to be as there found, the company evidently had such special interest, different in kind from the interest of the public, as entitled it to maintain the certiorari.

The proceedings of the board rest upon the act of March 19, 1874 (P. L. 1874, p. 45), as amended March 9, 1893 (Gen. St p. 2689, par. 221). The title of the act is "An act to authorize any city of this state to enter into contracts with railroad companies whose roads enter their corporate limits, whereby said companies may relocate, change or elevate their railroads, and when necessary for that purpose, to vacate, change the grade of or alter the lines of any streets or highways therein." The body of the amended act makes its provisions applicable to railroad companies whose roads "enter or lie within" any city. The supreme court held, according to our settled law, that under the constitution the operation of a statute is limited to the object expressed in its title, and therefore that even under the amended act railroads which did not "enter" a city were not within the constitutional operation of the law. The court further decided that railroads do not "enter" a city, within the purview of this act, unless their lines cross the border of the city, so as to be partly outside and partly inside the city. Since the road of the Greenville & Hudson Railway Company, with whom the resolutions under review were intended to contract, lies wholly within Jersey City, the court concluded that the statute was not applicable to the proceedings, and therefore set them aside. In this interpretation of the word "enter," as used in the title of this act, we do not concur. Although the words of a statute are to have a controlling force in its construction, yet each word should be so interpreted as to subserve the legislative intention which all the words disclose. The manifest purpose of this statute, as indicated both by its title and by its enactments, is to afford relief against the damages incident to the intersection of streets and railroads in the cities of the state. Such dangers exist equally whether the railroad lies wholly or but partly within the city. Although the letter of the act deals only with railroads that enter a city, yet the subject of legislation is not the entrance of the railroad, but its presence in the city. If we stick closely to the letter of the law, we may say that a railroad does not enter a city, unless its construction be commenced outside and continued into the city; but if the construction of the railroad began within the city, and extended beyond its border, or began within and ended within the limits of the city, or was fully completed before the city had an existence, the need and propriety of this legislation would be the same. As was said in Read v. City of Camden, 54 N. J. Law, 347, 373, 24 Atl. 549, 550: "The avowed object of this statute is highly beneficient, and therefore its provisions tending towards the accomplishment of that object should be liberally construed;" and especially is liberality of construction to be adopted when the question is whether the title of a statute is so restrictive as to defeat the body of the law. Johnson v. Borough of Asbury Park, 60 N. J. Law, 427-431, 39 Atl. 693. As early as Queen Elizabeth's time, it was unanimously resolved by the barons of the exchequer that with regard to remedial statutes "the office of the judges is always to make such construction as shall suppress the mischief and advance the remedy, and to suppress subtle inventions and evasions for the continuance of the mischief, and pro privato commodo, and to add force and life to the cure and remedy, according to the true intent of the makers of the act, pro bono publico." Heydon's Case, 3 Coke, 7a; Magdalen College...