Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/245/20/
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 20:20:19+00:00

Document:
So vital a governmental power as the power, upon just compensation, to take private property for public use cannot be divested through contracts made by the state. Such contracts are not within the protection of the contract clause of the Constitution.
Proceedings taken by a city to condemn land for a street through the grounds of a charitable corporation were resisted in reliance on an act by which, for valuable considerations, the legislature had prohibited such takings without the corporation's consent. The city undertook to condemn not only the land, but also the right under the contract. Held that the contract could not be successfully opposed to the power of condemnation, and this quite apart from the attempt to condemn the contract right itself, since, if the contract exemption were otherwise valid, its defeat by such a method would be a mere evasion.
Without departing from the settled rule that a writ of error will be dismissed if its total want of merit is shown conclusively by decisions of this Court extant at time of decision below, in this case, the course and resulting aspect of the proceedings below warrant a decree of affirmance.
grounds, and to prevent the accomplishment of this result, the present suit was begun by the hospital to protect its right of property and its alleged contract under the Act of 1854. As the result of proceedings in the state court, the purpose of the city was so shaped as to cause it to seek to take under the right of eminent domain not only the land desired for the street, but the rights under the contract of 1854, and there was a judgment against the hospital and in favor of the city in the trial court which was affirmed by the supreme court by the judgment which is under review on this writ of error. 254 Pa. 392.
The conclusions of the court were sustained in a per curiam opinion pointing out that there was no question involved of impairing the contract contained in the Act of 1854, since the express purpose of the city was to exert the power of eminent domain not only as to the land proposed to be taken, but as to the contract itself. The right to do both was upheld on the ground that the power of eminent domain was so inherently governmental in character and so essential for the public welfare that it was not susceptible of being abridged by agreement, and therefore the action of the city in exerting that power was not repugnant either to the state constitution or to the contract clause of the Constitution of the United States.
power of eminent domain upon just compensation for a public purpose comes within this general doctrine. Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge, 11 Pet. 420; West River Bridge Co. v. Dix, 6 How. 507; New Orleans Gas Co. v. Louisiana Light Co., 115 U. S. 650; Long Island Water Supply Co. v. Brooklyn, 166 U. S. 685; Offield v. New York, New Haven & Hartford R. Co., 203 U. S. 372; Cincinnati v. Louisville & Nashville R. Co., 223 U. S. 390.
The principle, then, upon which the contention under the Constitution rests having been, at the time the case was decided below, conclusively settled to be absolutely devoid of merit, it follows that a dismissal for want of jurisdiction might be directed. Equitable Life Assurance Society v. Brown, 187 U. S. 308, 187 U. S. 314; Consolidated Turnpike Co. v. Norfolk, etc., Ry. Co., 228 U. S. 596, 228 U. S. 600; Manhattan Life Insurance Co. v. Cohen, 234 U. S. 123, 234 U. S. 137. In view, however, of the course of the proceedings below and the aspect which the case took as resulting from those proceedings, without departing from the rule settled by the cases referred to, we think our decree may well be one not of dismissal, but of affirmance.

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