Ramapo Water Company v. City of New York
| Decision Date | 08 March 1915 |
| Docket Number | No. 715,715 |
| Citation | 35 S.Ct. 442,236 U.S. 579,59 L.Ed. 731 |
| Parties | RAMAPO WATER COMPANY, Appt., v. CITY OF NEW YORK and Charles Strauss, Charles N. Chadwick, and John F. Galvin, Individually and as Members of the Board of Water Supply of the City of New York |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Carroll G. Walter and Walter C. Noyes for appellant.
[Argument of Counsel from page 580 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Louis C. White and Frank L. Polk for appellees.
This is a bill in equity to restrain the city of New York and the board of water supply from proceeding further with the enterprise upon which they already had spent over one hundred and twenty-nine millions of dollars in order to provide the city with a supply of water. The ground is as follows:
The plaintiff (appellant) originally was incorporated under a general act, in 1887, for the purpose of storing and supplying water for mining, domestic, manufacturing, municipal, and agricultural purposes, to cities, other corporations, and persons. By virtue of other statutes it had the right to acquire title to land and water for its corporate purposes in the manner specified by the general railroad act, chap. 140, Laws of 1850; and it spent money, had surveys made, filed some maps, and acquired options for the purchase of real estate in pursuance of the ends for which it was formed.
In 1890 the laws under which the plaintiff was incorporated were repealed, but thereafter chap. 985 of the Laws of 1895 reiterated the grant of the powers specified in the charter, and authorized the corporation to acquire 'in the same manner specified and required in' the above-mentioned railroad act 'such lands and waters along the watershed of the Ramapo, and along such other watersheds and their tributaries, as may be suitable for the purpose of accumulating and storing the waters thereof.' The corporation is to make a map of the route adopted and the land to be taken, and file the same in the office of the clerk of the county through which the route runs or in which the land is situate. It is to give written notice to all occupants of lands so designated, and the occupants and owners are given time to apply for the appointment of commissioners, by a petition stating the objections to the route designated and the route to which it is proposed to alter the same, with elaborate provisions for notice and hearing and appeal to the supreme court, which 'may affirm the route proposed by the corporation, or may adopt that proposed by the petitioner.' Under this act the corporation filed maps covering substantially the whole of the drainage areas or watersheds of the Esopus, Catskill, Schoharie, and Rondout creeks about a thousand square miles (being the same lands that the city now has taken), acquired options for purchase of land, and spent large sums.
Before this time, it is alleged, the courts of New York had declared that the filing of maps under the railroad law of New York gave to the corporation filing them a vested right to the exclusive use of the lands covered by the maps. The plaintiff, in 1898, made an offer to the city of New York to furnish it with water from the region in question, but, pending investigation by the city, in 1901 the act of 1895, giving the plaintiff its rights, was repealed by an act alleged to be unconstitutional and void. In 1905 the city was empowered itself to acquire new water supplies, machinery was provided to that end, and the city has gone ahead as we have stated, without regard to the plaintiff's alleged rights. The plaintiff sets up that the laws under which the city acts impair the obligation of contracts between it and the state, and take its property without due process of law, contrary to article I., § 10, and the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. An...
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