Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/206/536.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 07:10:21+00:00

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George W. Sauer, the intestate of the plaintiffs in error (hereafter called the plaintiff), became, on July 1, 1886, the owner in fee simple of a parcel of land on the corner of One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street and Eighth avenue, in the city of New York. There was then upon the land a building used as a place of public resort. The city of New York was and is the owner of the fee of One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street and Eighth avenue, which it holds in trust for the public for highways.
Before the passage of the act hereinafter referred to One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street had been graded from Eighth [206 U.S. 536, 537] avenue in a westerly direction, until it reached a high, and, for street sues, impassable, bluff, on the summit of which ran St. Nicholas place, a public highway. The street, as laid out on the records, ascends the bluff, and continues westerly to the Hudson river. It extends easterly to the Harlem river at a point where the river is bridged by McComb's Dam bridge.
Second. That the act under which the viaduct was constructed, as construed by the court, impairs the obligation of a contract, in violation of 10, article 1, of the Constitution of the United States.
Messrs. Abram I. Elkus and Carlisle J. Gleason for plaintiffs in error. [206 U.S. 536, 539] Messrs. Theodore Connoly and Terence Farley for defendant in error.
Messrs. Henry B. Anderson and Chandler P. Anderson for certain property owners similarly situated.
The plaintiff now contends that the judgment afterwards rendered by the supreme court of New York, in conformity with the opinion of the court of appeals, denied rights secured to him by the Federal Constitution. This contention presents the only question for our determination, and the correctness of the principles of local land law applied by the state courts is not open to inquiry here, unless it has some bearing upon that question. But it may not be inappropriate to say that the decision of the court of appeals seems to be in full accord [206 U.S. 536, 544] with the decisions of all other courts in which the same question has arisen. The state courts have uniformly held that the erection over a street of an elevated viaduct, intended for general public travel, and not devoted to the exclusive use of a private transportation corporation, is a legitimate street improvement, equivalent to a change of grade; and that, as in the case of a change of grade, an owner of land abutting on the street is not entitled to damages for the impairment of access to his land and the lessening of the circulation of light and air over it. Selden v. Jacksonville, 28 Fla. 558, 14 L.R.A. 370, 29 Am. St. Rep. 278, 10 So. 457; Willis v. Winona City, 59 Minn. 27, 26 L.R.A. 142, 60 N. W. 814; Colclough v. Milwaukee, 92 Wis. 182, 65 N. W. 1039; Walish v. Milwaukee, 95 Wis. 16, 69 N. W. 818; Home Bldg. & Conveyance Co. v. Roanoke, 91 Va. 52, 27 L.R.A. 551, 20 S. E. 895 (cited with apparent approval by this court in Meyer v. Richmond, 172 U.S. 82 -95, 43 L. ed. 374-379, 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 106);wi llets Mfg. Co. v. Mercer County, 62 N. J. L. 95, 40 Atl. 782; Brand v. multnomah County, 38 Or. 79, 50 L.R.A. 389, 84 Am. St. Rep. 772, 60 Pac. 290, 62 Pac. 209; Mead v. Portland, 45 Or. 1, 76 Pac. 347 (Affirmed by this court in 200 U.S. 148 , 50 L. ed. 413, 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 171); Sears v. Crocker, 184 Mass. 588, 100 Am. St. Rep. 577, 69 N. E. 327; (Semble) DeLucca v. North Little Rock, 142 Fed. 597.
'The bridge is just as much a public highway as is Main street, with which it connects; and, whether we consider the approach as a part of the former or of the latter, it is merely a part of the highway. The city having, as it was authorized to do, established a new highway across the Mississippi river, it was necessary to connect it, for purposes of travel, with Main and the other streets of the city. This it has done, in the only way it could have been done, by what, in effect, amounts merely to raising the grade of the center of Main street in front of plaintiff's lot. It can make no difference in prin- [206 U.S. 536, 545] ciple whether this was done by filling up the street solidly, or, as in this case, by supporting the way on stone or iron columns. Neither is it important if the city raise the grade of only a part of the street, leaving the remainder at a lower grade. . . .
'The doctrine of the courts everywhere, both in England and in this country (unless Ohio and Kentucky are exceptions), is that so long as there is no application of the street to purposes other than those of a highway, any establishment or change of grade made lawfully, and not negligently performed, does not impose an additional servitude upon the street, and hence is not within the constitutional inhibition against taking private property without compensation, and is not the basis for an action for damages, unless there be an express statute to that effect. That this is the rule, and that the facts of this case fall within it, is too well established by the decisions of this court to require the citation of authorities from other jurisdictions. . . .
The cases cited usually recognized the authority of the New York elevated cases, hereinafter to be discussed, and approved the distinction from them made by Mr. Justice Mitchell.
But, as has been said, we are not concerned primarily with the correctness of the rule adopted by the court of appeals of New York and its conformity with authority. This court does not hold the relation to the controversy between these parties which the court of appeals of New York had. It was [206 U.S. 536, 546] the duty of that court to ascertain, declare, and apply the law of New York, and its determination of that law is conclusive upon this court. This court is not made, by the laws passed in pursuance of the Constitution, a court of appeal from the highest courts of the states, except to a very limited extent, and for a precisely defined purpose. The limitation upon the power of this court in the review of the decisions of the courts of the states, though elementary and fundamental, is not infrequently overlooked at the Bar, and unless it is kept steail y in mind much confusion of thought and argument result. It seems worth while to refer to the provisions of the Constitution and laws which mark and define the relation of this court to the courts of the state. Article 3, 2 of the Constitution ordains, among other things, that 'the judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority,' and that the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court shall be exercised under such regulations as Congress shall make.
It was from this provision of the Constitution that Marshall in Cohen v. Virginia, 6 Wheat. 264, 5 L. ed. 257, derived the power of this court to review the judgments of the courts of the states, and, in defining the appellate jurisdiction, the Chief Justice expressly limited it to questions concerning the Constitution, laws, and treaties of the United States, commonly called Federal questions, and excluded altogether the thought that, under the congressional regulation, the jurisdiction included any power to correct any supposed errors of the state courts in the determination of the state law. Such was the expressed limitation of the original judiciary act, in its present form found in 709 of the Revised Statutes, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 575, which has been observed by this court in so many cases that the citation of them would be an idle parade. It is enough to refer to Murdock v. Memphis, 20 Wall. 590, 22 Wall. 429, where, after great consideration, it was held that under the judiciary act, as amended to its present form, this court was limited to the consideration of [206 U.S. 536, 547] the Federal questions named in the Constitution. This court, whose highest function it is to confine all other authorities within the limits prescribed for them by the fundamental law, ought certainly to be zealous to restrain itself within the limits of its own jurisdiction, and not be insensibly tempted beyond them by the thought that an unjustified or harsh rule of law may have been applied by the state courts in the determination of a question committed exclusively to their care.
Second. That the law which authorized the construction of the viaduct, as interpreted by the court of appeals of New York, impaired the obligation of the contract with the city of New York, which is implied from the laying out of the street, in violation of article 1, 10, paragraph 1, of the Constitution. The contentions may profitably be considered separately.
Has the plaintiff been deprived of his property without due process of law? The viaduct did not invade the plaintiff's land. It was entirely outside that land. But it is said that appurtenant to the land there were easements of access, light, and air, and that the construction and operation of the viaduct impaired these easements to such an extent as to constitute a taking of them. The only question which need here be decided is whether the plaintiff had, as appurtenant to his land, easements of the kind described; in other words, whether the property which the plaintiff alleged was taken existed at all. The court below has decided that the plaintiff had no such easements; in other words, that there was no property taken. It is clear that, under the law of New York, an owner of land abutting on the street has easements of access, light [206 U.S. 536, 548] and air as against the erection of an elevated roadway by or for a private corporation for its own exclusive purposes, but that he has no such easements as against the public use of the streets, or any structures which may be erected upon the street to subserve and promote that pubic use. The same law which declares the easements defines, qualifies, and limits them. Surely such questions must be for the final determination of the state court. It has authority to declare that the abutting landowner has no easement of any kind over the abutting street; it may determine that he has a limited easement; or it may determine that he has an absolute and unqualified easement. The right of an owner of land abutting on public highways has been a fruitful source of litigation in the courts of all the states, and the decisions have been conflicting, and often in the same state irreconcilable in principle. The courts have modified or overruled their own decisions, and each state has in the end fixed and limited, by legislation or judicial decision, the rights of abutting owners in accordance with its own view of the law and public policy. As has already been pointed out, this court has neither the right nor the duty to reconcile these conflicting decisions nor to reduce the law of the various states to a uniform rule which it shall announce and impose. Upon the ground, then, that under the law of New York, as determined by its highest court, the plaintiff never owned the easements which he claimed, and that therefore there was no property taken, we hold that no violation of the 14th Amendment is shown.
The remaining question in the case is whether the judgment under review impaired the obligation of a contract. It appears from the cases to be cited that the courts of New York have expressed the rights of owners of land abutting upon public streets to and over those streets in terms of contract rather than in terms of title. In the city of New York the city owns the fee of the public streets (whether laid out under the civil law of the Dutch r egime, or as the result of conveyances between the city and the owners of land, or by [206 U.S. 536, 549] condemnation proceedings under the statutory law of the state) upon a trust that they shall forever be kept open as public streets, which is regarded as a covenant running with the abutting land. Accepting, for the purposes of this discussion, the view that the plaintiff's rights have their origin in a contract, then it must be that the terms of the trust and the extent of the resulting covenant are for the courts of New York finally to decide and limit, providing that in doing so they deny no Federal right of the owner. The plaintiff asserts that the case of Story v. New York Elev. R. Co. 90 N. Y. 122, 43 Am. Rep. 146, decided in 1882, four years before he acquired title to the property, interpreted the contract between the city of New York and the owners of land abutting upon its streets as assuring the owner easements of access, light, and air, which could not lawfully be impaired by the erection on the street of an elevated structure designed for public travel; that he is entitled to the benefit of his contract as thus interpreted, and that the judgment of the court denying him its benefits impaired its obligation. If the facts upon which this claim is based are accurately stated, then the case comes within the authority of Muhlker v. New York & H. R. Co. 197 U.S. 544 , 49 L. ed. 872, 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 522, which holds that, when the court of appeals has once interpreted the contract existing between the landowner and the city, that interpretation becomes a part of the contract, upon which one acquiring land may rely, and that any subsequent change of it to his injury impairs the obligation of the contract. It will be observed that it is an essential part of the plaintiff's case that he should show that his contract had been interpreted in the manner he states. It therefore becomes necessary to examine the Story Case, wherein, he asserts, such an interpretation was made. In order to ascertain precisely what that case decided we may consider other decisions of the court of appeals, though they are later in time than the acquisition of the plaintiff's title.
'It was not intended in the Story Case to overrule or change the law in regard to steam surface railroads. The case em- [206 U.S. 536, 553] bodied the application of what was regarded as well-established principles of law to a new combination of facts, such facts amounting, as was determined, to an absolute and permanent obstruction in a portion of the public street, and in a total and exclusive use of such portion by the defendant, and such permanent obstruction and total and exclusive use, it was further held, amounted to a taking of some portion of the plaintiff's easement in the street for the purpose of furnishing light, air, and access to his adjoining lot. This absolute and permanent obstruction of the street, and this total and exclusive use of a portion thereof by the defendant were accomplished by the erection of a structure for the elevated railroad of defendant; which structure is fully described in the case as reported.
The distinction between the erection of an elevated structure for the exclusive use of a private corporation and the same structure for the use of public travel is clearly illustrated in the contrast in the decisions of Reining v. New York, L. & W. R. Co. 128 N. Y. 157, 14 L.R.A. 133, 28 N. E. 640, and Talbot v. New York & H. R. Co. 151 N. Y. 155, 45 N. E. 382. In the first case [206 U.S. 536, 554] it was held that the abutting landowner had the right to compensation for the construction of a viaduct in the street for the practically exclusive occupation of a railroad. In the second case it was held that the abutting owner had no right of compensation for the erection of a public bridge with inclined approaches and a guard wall, to carry travel over a railroad, although the structure impaired the access to his land. We are not concerned with the question whether the distinction between an elevated structure for the exclusive use of a corporation and the same structure for the purposes of public travel is, so far as an abutting landowner is concerned, a just or harsh one, provided it is a clear distinction based upon real differences. We think that before the plaintiff had acquired his title the law of New York had plainly drawn this distinction. The highest court of the state had held that the contract of the owner of land abutting on streets entitled him to the right of unimpaired access and uninterrupted circulation of light and air as against an elevated structure erected for the exclusive use of a private corporation; had, with scrupulous care, refrained from holding that he had the same right as against an elevated structure of the same kind erected for the purpose of public travel; and had pointed out plainly the essential distinction between the two cases. This distinction, as we have already seen, has been made or approved by the courts of other states wherever the occasion to consider it arose, and it is a real and substantial distinction which arises out of the trust upon which the public owns the public highways.
The trust upon which streets are held is that they shall be devoted to the uses of public travel. When they, or a substantial part of them, are turned over to the exclusive use of a single person or corporation, we see no reason why a state court may not hold that it is a perversion of their legitimate uses, a violation of the trust, and the imposition of a new servitude. But the same court may consistently hold that with the acquisition of the fee, and in accordance with the trust, [206 U.S. 536, 555] the city obtained the right to use the surface, the soil below, and the space above the surface, in any manner which is plainly designed to promote the ease, facility, and safety of all those who may desire to travel upon the streets; and that the rights attached to the adjoining land, or held by contract by its owner, are subordinate to such uses, whether they were foreseen or not when the street was laid out. In earlier and simpler times the surface of the streets was enough to accommodate all travel. But under the more complex conditions of modern urban life, with its high and populous buildings, and its rapid interurban transportation, the requirements of public travel are largely increased. Sometimes the increased demands may be met by subways and sometimes by viaducts. The construction of either solely for public travel may well be held by a state court to be a reasonable adaptation of the streets to the uses for which they were primarily designed. What we might hold on these questions where we had full jurisdicio n of the subject, it is not necessary here even to consider.
In basing its judgment on the broad, plain, and approved distinction between the abandonment of the street to private uses and its further devotion to public uses, the court below overruled none of its decisions, but, on the contrary, acted upon the principles which they clearly declared. The plaintiff, therefore, has not shown that in his case the state court has changed, to his injury, the interpretation of his contract with the city, which it had previously made, and upon which he had the right to rely. The case at bar is not within the authority of the Muhlker Case. When Muhlker acquired his title the elevated railroad cases had declared the law of New York, and it was here held that he had the right to rely upon his contract as in them it had been interpreted. The structure complained of was in the Muhlker Case, as in the elevated railroad case, one devoted to the exclusive use of a private corporation. This court, in order to obtain jurisdiction and to declare that a Federal right was violated, was obliged to hold, and did hold, that the two cases were identical, and that [206 U.S. 536, 556] in deciding the Muhlker Case the court of appeals had in effect overruled the elevated railroad cases, and this view was supported by the court of appeals itself in Lewis v. New York & H. R. Co. 162 N. Y. 202, 56 N. E. 540, where a plaintiff in like situation with Muhlker had obtained damages for exactly the same structure. The theory upon which the Muhlker Case stands and upon which it was put in the opinion of the court, is that, in deciding against Muhlker, the state court had overruled its own decisions, and changed the interpretation of the contract upon which he had the right to rely. But the fundamental fact upon which the decision in the Muhlker Case rested, present there, is absent in the case at bar. Here there was no overruling of decisions and no change in the interpretation of the contract. There was, therefore, no impairment of the obligation of a contract, and the decision was merely on a question of local law with the soundness of which we have no concern.
It may be said there was a qualification made in those cases and recognized in the Muhlker Case, that it was not alone the elevation of a structure above the surface, but the elevation of one 'useless for general street purposes.' I may accept the limitation. The structure in the case at bar comes within the characterization. It is useless for general street purposes. It obstructs the frontage of abutting lots and affords no access to or from them in any proper sense. There is a descent by stairs from it to the street below, but for pedestrians only-necessarily not for vehicles. But there is a like descent by stairs from elevated railroads to streets below, but this did not save the roads from liability for abutting property.
It must be borne in mind that this case is not disposed of by making a contrast between the passage of a railroad and the traffic on a street. The contrast is catching and only seems important. In New York a railroad is a street use and can be [206 U.S. 536, 558] imposed on the surface of a street without liability for consequential damages, and this even if it be a steam railroad. Fobes v. Rome, W. & O. R. Co. 121 N. Y. 505, 8 L.R.A. 453, 24 N. E. 919. The distinction, therefore, was necessary to be made between the surface and the open space over the surface. And we have seen that this distinction was noted in the cases and determined their judgment. In other words, the use of a street by a railroad was decided to be a proper street use, and, therefore, whether put upon the surface or above the surface, retained that character. In either place it was a proper street use and damages could only have been consequent to the elevation of the road above the surface, to which, to quote again the Story Case, the 'public purpose of a street' attached only.
Mr. Choate, also for the property owners, submitted the following: 'The abutting owners on the streets have an interest in the nature of property for all time in the streets above their surface, and in having them kept open and unobstructed forever, of which they cannot be deprived without being compensated.' The contentions express the invocation of the property owner of the court, and the court responded to and sustained it. Is not that response rejected in the case at bar? The structure in the case towers as high as a house of five stories and is planted on columns, the size and strength and number of which can easily be imagined. Does it need any [206 U.S. 536, 559] comment to describe its effect? The plaintiffs have really no access to it from their land or from any building that may be put upon their land, because they may not bridge the intervening gap. They have no other access to it but that which I have described. The public has no access from it to plaintiffs' property but that which I have described.
The buildings that stood upon the land when the structure wasbu ilt were practically under its shadow. 1 Any buildings that may be erected will be equally so. 'To get above it,' plaintiffs' counsel asserts, 'the abutter must build up five stories,' and it is only from such elevation that he may contemplate the traffic that passes his premises. And even then, counsel also asserts, light can only reach the abutter 'through a slit 10 feet wide between his eaves and the edge of the structure.' And to this measure his right to an unobstructed frontage, his right to unobstructed light and air, has been reduced. Is it possible that the law can see no legal detriment in this, no impairment of the abutter's grant from the city, no right to compensation?
From my standpoint, what the courts of states other than New York have decided is of no consequence to the pending controversy, and I take no time therefore to dispute the pertinence of their citation to justify the structure of which plaintiffs complain.
When the original plaintiff, George Sauer, became the owner of the property, there were standing upon it certain frame buildings which had been used as a pleasure resort. In 1890 he enlarged and improved the buildings at great expense and occupied them at the time of the erection of the structure in controversy. These buildings were destroyed in 1897 by fire, and the land is now vacant. And it may be noted that Sauer having died pending this writ of error, his administratrix and heirs have been substituted as parties plaintiff.
I am not insensible of the strength of the reasoning by which this court sustains that conclusion, but certainly all lawyers would not assent to it. Indeed, one must be a lawyer to assent to it. At times there seems to be a legal result which takes no account of the obviously practical result. At times there seems to come an antithesis between legal sense and common sense.

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