State ex rel. Ryan v. District Court Ramsey Co.

• Decision Date: 18 July 1902
• Docket Number: Nos. 12,962-(30).,s. 12,962-(30).
• Parties: STATE ex rel. M. P. RYAN and Others v. DISTRICT COURT OF RAMSEY COUNTY and Another.<SMALL><SUP>1</SUP></SMALL>
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

Page 146

87 Minn. 146

STATE ex rel. M. P. RYAN and Others v. DISTRICT COURT OF RAMSEY COUNTY and Another.¹

Nos. 12,962-(30).

Supreme Court of Minnesota.

July 18, 1902.

Writ of certiorari issued out of the supreme court on the relation of M. P. Ryan and others to review a judgment of the district court for Ramsey county, Kelly, J. Affirmed.

Durment & Moore, for petitioners.

James E. Markham, Franklin H. Griggs and Thomas McDermott, for respondents.

LOVELY, J.

Certiorari to the district court of Ramsey county to return its records on the hearing of objections to special assessments levied under the new citizens' charter of St. Paul to pay for property condemned for approaches to the bridge connecting the river termini of Wabasha street in that city. The objections were overruled, and judgment was entered for the city.

Upon the petition of the contesting lot owners a sufficient return to the writ has been made to enable us to pass upon the right to appropriate the property required for the bridge improvement and the authority to assess abutting property to pay therefor. As we regard it, the most serious claim of relators upon this review is that the city could not, under its new charter, exercise the right of eminent domain. A consideration of this question necessarily involves much that is essential upon the right to make the disputed assessments, and we shall therefore dispose of it first.

The new charter of St. Paul was adopted in pursuance of the constitutional amendment of 1898, authorizing cities and villages to frame their own charters (Const. art. 4, § 36; Laws 1899, pp. v, vi, vii). It is substantially provided therein that, before any city or village shall be entitled to its benefits, a board of fifteen freeholders shall be appointed by the judges of the district court of the district where the city or village which desires to incorporate is situated, to return for submission to the electors the draft of a charter to be voted upon at the next election, and in terms that

"Before any city shall incorporate under this act the legislature shall prescribe by law the general limits within which such charter shall be framed; * * * but such charter shall always be in harmony with and subject to the constitution and laws of the state of Minnesota,"

and when duly ratified shall at the end of thirty days thereafter become the charter of such city or village and supersede any existing charter or amendments thereof. Also, that the legislature may provide general laws relating to the affairs of cities, the application of which may be limited to municipalities of designated populations,

"Which shall apply equally to all such cities of either class, and which shall be paramount while in force to the provisions relating to the same matter included in the local charter."

To accomplish this change, an enabling statute was passed (Laws 1899, c. 351), which applied only to cities already organized. It adopted the language of the amendment itself, added regulations for the submission of the new charter to a popular vote, insured the protection of existing rights, restrained the power to incur local indebtedness within prescribed bounds, but, providing no framework of details to govern the commissions of freeholders in the formulation of the charters, left the duty in that respect to implication.

Within the year following, the new charter of St. Paul was submitted and ratified. When effect was attempted to be given to it, a quo warranto proceeding to test the title of the chief of police was brought to this court, wherein it was insisted that the enabling act and the charter adopted in pursuance thereof were in conflict with the amendment to the organic law upon the contention that the legislative act related only to cities already organized, while the amendment itself in express terms applied to all cities or villages, whether then existing or to incorporate thereafter. Upon a review of the historical conditions which led to the adoption of the amendment in 1898 in connection with its title we held the enabling statute valid. State v. O'Connor, 81 Minn. 79, 83 N. W. 498. It was also urged that the enabling act was ineffective for the reason that the amendment did not prescribe either general topics or specific restrictions within limits under which the new charters were to be framed. Upon this contention we further held (page 86), in the language of Justice BROWN, that the

"Authority to frame city charters is granted by the constitutional amendment, and ex necessitate extends to all powers properly belonging to the government of municipalities; and the requirement that the legislature shall prescribe limits within which such charter may be framed must be construed to mean limits beyond which the charter may not go. In other words, it is thus made the duty of the legislature to provide such general limitations and restrictions as that body may deem expedient and proper."

We understand it to be conceded by relators here that there are in the new charter of St. Paul appropriate and plenary provisions to condemn land for public uses, as well as to authorize special assessments upon the abutting property, providing the condemnation can be made under the amendment of 1898, and the assessments sustained under article 9, § 1, as amended in 1869. It is urged, however, that the authority to take private property to improve the thoroughfares of the city being inherent in the state, there must be specific authority directly conferred by the legislature to authorize the exercise of this right, which has not been expressly given: hence that the condemnation is illegal, and these assessments void.

In the expression of abstract rights upon which judicial conclusions must rest, precision in statement and inference is essential. Words are very potent agents in the process of reasoning, and an inaccurate understanding or use of a word, term, or phrase often leads to fallacy and error of judgment. It is true that the right of eminent domain is not expressed in the constitution; hence, if it exists, it must be inherent. But we surmise that relator's counsel have not sufficiently discriminated between that which is inherent in the state and that which is inaccurately assumed to be inherent in the constitution, for the constitution must not be confounded with the state, nor with the absolute rights reserved to its people. Hence the statement that the right to exercise the sovereign power of eminent domain by the state, though strictly true, means exactly that it is reserved to the people, but the people may change their fundamental law by the methods prescribed therein in any manner not subversive of a republican form of government, or in any way that does not prescribe aristocratic or monarchial innovations. Hopkins v. City of Duluth, 81 Minn. 189, 83 N. W. 536. But, since the power of eminent domain is not expressly delegated to the legislature, its existence, which is inherent, must be implied; and the courts, upon a consideration of its essential nature and effective application in the obvious necessity for its exercise by the highest popular element of state authority, have heretofore held it to be a legislative power. The duty therefore, to ascertain the public urgency for taking private property for public use has been assumed by the courts to originate in this popular branch of the government, and to depend upon legislative discretion in so far as the legislature is not restrained by the will of the people. Wilkin v. First Div. St. P. & P. R. Co., 16 Minn. 244 (271); Weir v. St. Paul, S. & T. F. R. Co., 18 Minn. 139 (155); State v. District Court of Hennepin Co., 83 Minn. 464, 86 N. W. 455; McGee v. Board of Co. Commrs. of Hennepin Co., 84 Minn. 472, 88 N. W. 6.

But, the people being the paramount source of power, it likewise follows that the legislature does not confer this right absolutely, nor beyond the reserved power of the people to confer it upon municipalities or their governing bodies, when by the fundamental law the legislative authority is abridged or changed in that respect by a different distribution or new gift of governmental authority. Upon a similar contention to that urged here under an amendment to the organic law of Missouri, which is the prototype of our own home-rule amendment to the constitution, the supreme court of that state held the following language, which we approve and adopt: "The people, * * * in their sovereign capacity and by their organic law, could delegate to the people of a municipality this power to frame a charter for its own local government as to matters falling properly within municipal regulation. * * * Such a right is entirely in accord with the genius of our institutions bringing the regulation and government of local affairs within the observation of those who are to be affected thereby, and at the same time preventing the officious and selfish intermeddling with the charters of our cities without the knowledge of those...