Rogers v. Arkansas-Louisiana Highway Improvement District

• Decision Date: 30 June 1919
• Docket Number: 65
• Citation: 213 S.W. 749,139 Ark. 322
• Parties: ROGERS v. ARKANSAS-LOUISIANA HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

213 S.W. 749

139 Ark. 322

ROGERS v. ARKANSAS-LOUISIANA HIGHWAY IMPROVEMENT DISTRICT

No. 65

Supreme Court of Arkansas

June 30, 1919

Appeal from Desha Chancery Court; E. G. Hammock, Chancellor affirmed.

Decree affirmed.

F. M Rogers, for appellants.

1. The assessments of benefits are unequal, not uniform and excessive.

2. Many lands are not benefited at all.

3. The assessments are out of proportion to and in excess of benefits. Hence the assessment is illegal and void. 98 Ark 113; 103 Id. 127; 108 Id. 419; 113 Id. 493. See also 14 Ark. 286; 31 Id. 557; 35 Id. 169; 60 Id. 409.

E. E Hopson and Rose, Hemingway, Cantrell Loughborough, for appellees.

The assessments were valid and made according to law. The presumption is that they are valid, and there is no showing to the contrary. 99 Ark. 508; 84 Id. 257; 94 Id. 563; 197 U.S. 430-433. The amount of betterments to each tract is a mere matter of forecast and estimate. Ib.; 21 Ark. 60; 50 Id. 513; 64 Id. 258, 265-6. The gist of the whole matter is clearly stated in 100 Ark. 366, 369.

We must depend upon the opinions of men of sound judgment and reasonable information to determine what future benefits will be. 113 Ark. 493-6. When the Legislature has fixed the amount of assessment for benefits, its finding is conclusive unless there is arbitrary and manifest abuse of power which must be shown. 100 Ark. 366; 140 S.W. 585; 108 Ark. 419; 201 S.W. 798; 98 Ark. 544. See also 2 Cooley on Taxation (3 ed.), 1226, and cases cited.

OPINION

SMITH, J.

Appellants are owners of lands lying in the Arkansas-Louisiana Highway Improvement District, and pursuant to section 13 of the act creating that district filed suits in the chancery court of the county in which their lands are located to have their assessments revised. The interests of these complaining land owners are not identical, and they have attacked their assessment on different grounds. Indeed, to grant relief to some of them on the grounds assigned would result in denying relief to others. For instance, certain of these landowners say that the assessment of benefits should be levied on the lands throughout the district as a whole, and each tract should bear an equal and uniform burden of the cost; while one of the land owners whose lands received the lowest assessment insists that his lands should not have been assessed at all.

The relief prayed was denied by the chancery court, and this appeal has been prosecuted to review that action.

It is insisted that a gross inequality exists between certain lands in Chicot County in township 15 south, range 2 west, and township 16 south, range 1 west, and other lands in the district, because the lands in Chicot County are nearer the road to be improved, yet bear a less amount than other lands farther away. But these lands in favor of which it is said a discrimination has been made are situated on the east bank of Lake Chicot--a body of water as wide and and as deep as the Mississippi River and eighteen miles long--which lies between the road and the lands which are said to have a grossly inadequate assessment against them. We think there is less merit in this contention than there is in that of the owners of the lands lying east of the Lake that their lands should not be assessed at all. Those owners base their contention upon the grounds that the lake is unbridged, and that the owners of lands east of the lake would make but little use of the highway if it were improved. However, it is shown that a ferry is operated across the lake and that once the property owner is across the lake he has connection with the largest system of improved roads ever undertaken as a single enterprise in this State. This assessment was made by "zones," the eighth zone being charged with the lowest assessment, and it is shown that these lands east of the lake were reduced from the second to the eighth zone by the commissioners when the assessment of benefits was made, upon the complaint of the property owners.

Other property owners complain of their assessments because a drainage ditch thirty-six feet wide lies...