Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1904-11-23
Iowa Supreme Court Hands
Down an Important Ruling
Regarding City Grades
NO REMEDY FOR LOT OWNERS.
While Acknowledging the Apparent
Injustice of the Proceedings in the
Case in Question Justice Weaver
Says There Is No Escaping the
Law.

Des Moines Nov. % The supreme
court of Iowa faced the dire necessity
yesterday of deciding that property
owners whose trees are about to be
the construction of new sidewalks have
no remedy against the operation Of this
discretion by city authorities, if the lat
ter observe the law and do nothing I'M
necessarily.
ITO the person who has planted
trees" says Justice Weaver, cared for
them, protected them against violence,
and has seen them grow and develop
into things of beauty until he comes to
regard them with genuine affection,
this conclusion is no doubt unwelcome,
but the court must administer the law
as it finds it, and the rule we have
stated is we'll settled
Justice Weaver's first thought, as he
contemplated the heartburnings the de-
ctslon would cause, was to say that the
conclusion would not only be unwel-
come to those who had planted, cared
for and grown trees into living springs
of affection, but that it would go far to
increase their willingness for an early
transfer ito the celestial city where
boards of public works exercise no
Jurisdiction and trees are allowed to
grow as God made them to grow"
The case was one appealed from this
city in which the city tried to level
parking on East Walnut street and
have a sidewalk built to grade, mean
ing a cut of two feet in the parking
and the ruination of magnificent row
of trees planted and tenderly nurtured
during thirty years. Frances E. Kemp,
Kittie M. Chamberlain and w. r. Mar
quis owned the property which it was
proposed to improve. The parking is
twenty feet in width and the street
pavement. 1t was claimed that if the
sidewalk was put in a cut to preserve
the higher ground about the trees, it
would make the walk a menace as
mudhole in the summer and a snow
catcher in the winter.
1T is not an easy undertaking to
lay down any hard and fast rule as to
the exact circumstances or combination
of circumstances under which the
court will restrain a city from the exc
cution OF a proposed plan of public i'm
provement,' said Justice Weaver.
THE state having instructed such
work to the municipal authorities, the
court can not impose upon them it's
own ideas of4utility, taste or beauty.
LIT is often the case that persons in
municipal authority find beauty in dead
uniformity and bend all their energies
to reproduce in their streets the monot-
ony of a checkerboard, squarfng the an
giles, blowing down the slopes, filling up
the valleys, leaving a portion of the
population perched on inaccessible
heights and others in yawning depths,
and if in doing this work the letter Of
the law has been fairly observed there
is no relief for the property owner who
thinks himself injured, except such as
he may derive from expressing his
opinion on the subject"
While the courts can not interfere in
a reasonable plan of improvement by a
city and can not compel the adoption
of it's own ideas Of beauty and utility
In the improvement of street, yet the
property owner whose trees are af-
fected has a property interest in the
trees which must be given considera-
ton. and no unreasonable molestation
can be tolerated.
The supreme court thinks that the
city may save the trees in question if
it exercises reasonable care in doing the
work Of reducing the grade for the
walk In the case. 1t suggests how this
may be done, and belives that there is.
at least a fair prospect that plaintiffs
fears for the preservation of the trees
will not be realized.