Slattery v. City of St. Louis

• Decision Date: 13 February 1894
• Citation: 25 S.W. 521,120 Mo. 183
• Parties: Slattery v. The City of St. Louis, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

25 S.W. 521

120 Mo. 183

Slattery v. The City of St. Louis, Appellant

Supreme Court of Missouri, Second Division

February 13, 1894

Appeal from St. Louis City Circuit Court. -- Hon. Daniel Dillon Judge.

Reversed and remanded.

W. C Marshall for appellant.

(1) The circuit court erred in excluding competent, relevant and material testimony offered by defendant. (2) The measure of damages in a case where access to a highway has been cut off is the difference in the market value of the land before and after such cut off. (3) The seventh instruction asked by defendant should also have been given for it authorized the jury in determining the question of depreciation to consider the rental value of the property. This was proper. Autenreith v. Railroad, 36 Mo.App. 254; Taylor v. Railroad, 38 Mo.App. 668; Sheehy v Railroad, 94 Mo. 574. (4) The city would have had a right to vacate the whole of Twenty-first street, and would not have been liable to plaintiff for thereby depriving her of access to her property from Twenty-first street, if she otherwise had access to her property. Her property fronted thirty feet on Twenty-first street, and fronted one hundred and fifty feet on Poplar street. Thus her property was still perfectly accessible from Poplar street, and the city is not liable simply because she was deprived of access to it from Twenty-first street. Glasgow v. City, 87 Mo. 678; Dillon on Mun. Corp., secs. 650, note, and 666, note 2; Paul v. Carver, 24 Pa. St. 207.

Leverett Bell for respondent.

(1) The proceedings in the suit to widen Twenty-first street were not competent evidence and should have been excluded. Simpson v. Kansas City, 111 Mo. 237. (2) The instructions given for plaintiff present no ground for reversal. The first instruction is unobjectionable. Sheehy v. Railroad, 94 Mo. 574; Brady v. Railroad, 111 Mo. 329; Taylor v. Railroad, 38 Mo.App. 668. (3) The court did not err in refusing instructions.

OPINION

Burgess, J.

This is an action for damages by plaintiff against the defendant for erecting, in front of her property, a permanent bridge, thereby impairing its usefulness and value. The petition alleges that plaintiff, in 1889, and continuously since then, was the owner of a lot of ground at the southeast corner of Twenty-first and Poplar streets, having a front of thirty feet on Twenty-first by depth of one hundred and fifty feet eastwardly along the south line of Poplar street, on which there was a substantial brick building; that the property fronted on Twenty-first and bordered on Poplar, which were unobstructed streets, sixty feet wide and open to travel; that in June, 1890, the defendant commenced, and has since prosecuted the erection of a bridge lengthwise in Twenty-first street, for the purpose of carrying the street traffic over the railway tracks in Mill Creek Valley; that said bridge is a permanent structure composed of stone, steel and iron, and is intended to, and will, occupy said street in front of plaintiff's premises forever, so that plaintiff is deprived of access to said street as the same existed prior to the erection of said bridge; that the bridge occupies practically the entire width of Twenty-first street, and the eastern side of the bridge is composed of a solid wall of masonry about six feet in height, and is located within two feet west of the west line of plaintiff's building, and runs parallel therewith along the entire front of said building, and north and south of the same.

There was no effort by defendant to agree with plaintiff as to her damages before commencing the obstruction, nor were any steps taken under the statute for that purpose. The answer is a general denial. On a trial had before a jury, plaintiff obtained a verdict for $ 2,750. She subsequently remitted $ 258.72. The case is in this court on defendant's appeal.

The bridge, it seems, occupied substantially near about the full width of the street, leaving only a narrow pathway of about two feet in width in front of plaintiff's property. For the purpose of showing that the obstruction was not permanent and to limit plaintiff's right to recovery to such damages as she may have suffered from September, 1890, until the date of the trial, defendant offered to prove that there was a proceeding pending in the circuit court for the widening of Twenty-first street in front of her property which would make the street twenty feet wide between the bridge and plaintiff's building line which would take about all the plaintiff's...