Northeastern Gas Transmission Co. v. Warren

• Decision Date: 17 January 1957
• Citation: Northeastern Gas Transmission Co. v. Warren, 128 A.2d 783, 144 Conn. 217 (Conn. 1957)
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: NORTHEASTERN GAS TRANSMISSION COMPANY et al. v. Frances H. WARREN et al. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 783

128 A.2d 783

144 Conn. 217

NORTHEASTERN GAS TRANSMISSION COMPANY et al. v. Frances H. WARREN et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Jan. 17, 1957.

Warren W. Eginton, Stamford, with whom, on the brief, was George F. Lowman, Stamford, for appellants (defendants).

Arthur C. Williams, Bridgeport, with whom, on the brief, was Daniel F. Wheeler, Bridgeport, for appellees (plaintiff).

Before INGLIS, C. J., and BALDWIN, O'SULLIVAN, WYNNE and DALY, JJ.

O'SULLIVAN, Associate Justice.

Northeastern Gas Transmission Company presented this application to the Superior Court in conformity with the provisions of what is now § 2620d of the 1955 Cumulative Supplement to the General Statutes. The applicant sought an order appointing a committee to assess damages for the taking of a right of way for a high-pressure natural gas transmission line across property owned by Otey Y. Warren, Frances H. Warren and Elinor F. Warren, who were made defendants. The Norwalk Savings Society, holding a mortgage upon the property, was also cited in as a defendant but was subsequently dropped. When Otey Y. Warren died during the pendency of the application, his executrices were substituted as defendants and appeared in his stead. To complete the history of the change of parties, Tennessee Gas Transmission Company, at its own request, was added as a plaintiff upon a showing that it had acquired from its wholly owned subsidiary, the named plaintiff, all of the latter's pipe lines and appurtenant facilities located in Connecticut and had assumed all of the liabilities of the subsidiary. We shall herein refer to both plaintiffs as though they had operated jointly in the activities giving rise to this litigation.

As requested in the application, the court appointed a committee of three disinterested persons to assess just damages for the taking of the easement. Upon being sworn, they viewed the locus and held hearings at which the parties submitted evidence bearing on the extent of the damages. Thereafter, the committee filed with the court their report, concluding with the statement that the damages suffered by the defendants were assessed at $4020. Pursuant to § 171 of the Practice Book, the defendants filed a motion to correct the report. The committee, to whom the motion was sent, granted it in part and denied it in part, and so reported to the court. At this point, the defendants, acting under § 173 of the Practice Book, filed three exceptions to the report as amended. The exceptions were overruled, the report was accepted, and, from the judgment rendered, the defendants have appealed to this court.

The facts found by the committee need not be stated in the detailed manner in which they appear in the report as amended. For the purposes of this appeal, the following summary will suffice: The defendants own almost ten acres of land lying in the town of Norwalk. The plaintiffs, in order to continue with the laying of their gas transmission line across the state, and acting under the authority set forth in Public Act No. 3 of the March, 1950, special session of the General Assembly, as amended, Cum.Sup.1955, c. 264a, took, in 1951, a permanent easement in seventy hundredths of an acre of the defendants' property and a temporary easement, to expire at the latest two years after the taking, in thirty-seven hundredths of an acre. The installation of the pipe line in the defendants' property was completed by July, 1952, and within several months the line was actually put into operation.

It was the contention of the defendants to the committee that compensation for the taking should, as they expressed themselves, 'include an amount representative of the depreciated market value found to be caused by a not entirely unfounded public fear of danger' from the pipe line. To support the factual part of that proposition, the defendants submitted evidence to establish the existence of a public fear of danger arising from the maintenance of the plaintiffs' transmission lines. For example, they offered evidence of three leaks on feeder lines, one having occurred at Torrington on October 15, 1952, one at Norwalk on November 14, 1952, and one at Winsted on December 11, 1952. The evidence of the plaintiffs on this phase of the matter was designed to dispute the existence of any such fear. Thus, they offered evidence that in the immediate neighborhood of the defendants' property many one-family houses, a gasoline service station, a nursery school and an electric power station had been built since the taking and, furthermore, that on other nearby properties through which the plaintiffs' pipe line had been...