Case ID: us-ct-cl_48/html/0514-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Chief Justice White", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

MATTIE W. JACKSON ET AL. v. THE UNITED STATES.
    [47 C. Cls. R., 579; 230 U. S. R., 1.]
    
      On the claimants' appeal.
    
    ■Crevasses on tlie right bank of the Mississippi operate as safety valves ' in allowing the escape of water into vast natural drainage basins in tlie rear, thereby appreciably lessening the height of the river in times of flood. The Mississippi Commission builds levees on the right bank exclusively, which dam the crevasses and prevent the escape of water into the drainage basins. The immediate effect is to increase the height of the river in times of flood; and the ultimate result is the prolonged overflow and thereby the ruin of plantations on the left bank of the river for agricultural purposes. When the general plan for improving the navigation of the Mississippi is adopted the Government engineers foresee the injury which will be done to agricultural lands on the left side of the river and calculate the cost of protecting those lands by levees but abandon the scheme because the cost will be greater than the value of the lands. The only question in the case is whether it comes within the decisions of the Supreme Court in PunvpeUy v. Green Bay Go., and United! States v. Lynah, or within the decision in Bedford, v. United States.
    
    The court below decides:
    I. The injury to and destruction of agricultural lands on the left bank of the Mississippi, resulting from the Eads plan for improving the navigation of the river, do not constitute a taking of private property for public use coming within the decisions in Punvpelly v. Green Bay Company (13 Wall., 166) and United States v. Lynah (188 U, S. R,, 445) but are consequential in character and danvnum absque injuria, coming within the decision in Bedford v. United States (192 U. S. R., 225).
    II.It is established by the decision of the Supreme Court in Bedford v. United States that the Government may improve the navigation of navigable rivers by building revetments, resting only against the banks, to prevent erosion and preserve the natural course of the channel, and that the consequences, however injurious to the private property of riparian owners, are but natural results.
    III. Where the bed of the stream was not disturbed; where no cross-tide dams, jetties, or other improvements retarded the flow of the water, backing .it up and causing it to overflow riparian lands; where the Government simply took the banks of the river as it found them and sought to preserve them in statu quo, there was no Constitutional liability.
    IV. Lands on the bank of a navigable river are burdened with the servitude of a dominant right in the Government to improve the navigation of the river. The ownership of riparian lands on navigable waters is always subject to the consequences of governmental improvements in aid of navigation, though the actual taking of such lands would bring them within the safeguard of the Constitution.
    The decision of the court below' is affirmed on the same grounds, the opinion of the Supreme Court, saying:
    “The court concluded in view of the authority of the United States over navigation and its right to construct works for that purpose, that there was no liability on the part of the United States, basing its views on this subject upon Bedford v. United States, 192 U. S. 225. The petition was therefore dismissed.
    * # # # *
    It was directly ruled as to work done by the Mississippi River Commission in Bedford v. United States, 192 U. S. 225, upon the authority of which case, as we have said, the court below placed its ruling, and as the underlying principles which controlled the decision in the Bedford case and which govern the subject were again at this term with much elaboration stated and applied, we think it unnecessary to do more than refer to that ruling {United States v. Chandler-•Dunbar Water Power Co., 229 U. S. 53), and to direct that the judgment below be affirmed.”
    June 16, 1913.
   Mr. Chief Justice White

delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court