Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/271/403.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 21:06:05+00:00

Document:
'Relators seek to compel the commissioner of docks to approve permits for the filling in of lands under water. [271 U.S. 403, 406] 'The facts herein are substantially the same as in Appleby v. City of New York, decided herewith, with this difference: The city established a new bulkhead line in 1916, which crosses the premises granted between Twelfth and Thirteenth avenues. It was held in the action that the rights of the relators are not limited by this bulkhead line, but only by the bulkhead line established by the Secretary of War. The court below decided herein that a writ of peremptory mandamus should issue unless condemnation proceedings were instituted to acquire relators' property, and property rights within such line. 199 App. Div. 552, 192 N. Y. S. 222.
'We held in the action that the title of relators to lands actually under water is subject to the rights of the city to improve the same for the purposes of navigation, but that the city must reacquire the property rights in the land under water which it has conveyed before it can carry out its plans for such improvement.
Section 15 reads: [271 U.S. 403, 408] 'No grant made by virtue of this ordinance shall authorize the grantee to construct bulkheads or piers or make land in conformity thereto without permission so to do is first had and obtained from the common council, and the grantee shall be bound to make such lands, piers and bulkheads at such times and in such manner as the common council shall direct under penalty of forfeiture of such grant for noncompliance with such terms of the common council.
Messrs. Charles E. Hughes, of New York City, Charles Henry Butler, of Washington, D. C., and Banton Moore, of New York City, for plaintiffs in error.
The relators base their writ upon the alleged impairment of their contract rights contained in the grant and covenants of their deeds by the plan adopted in 1916 under the act of 1871 (Laws 1871, c. 574) by the dock department, and approved by the sinking fund trustees, the execution of which the dock commissioner is enforcing by a formal refusal to grant permission as requested by the relators to fill up their lots. The authority of the dock commissioner and the sinking fund trustees under the act of 1871 is such as to make the plan and the refusal equivalent to a statute of the state, and, assuming that it is in conflict with the grant and covenants of relators' deeds, it is a law of the state impairing a contract obligation, under section 10, article 1, of the federal Constitution. New Orleans Waterworks Co. v. Louisiana Sugar Refining Co., 125 U.S. 18 , 8 S. Ct. 741; Williams v. Bruffy, 96 U.S. 176 , 183; Walla Walla City v. Walla Walla Water Works Co., 172 U.S. 1 , 19 S. Ct. 77; Mercantile Trust & Deposit Co. v. Columbus, 203 U.S. 311 , 27 S. Ct. 83; Zucht v. King., 260 U.S. 174 , 43 S. Ct. 24. We have jurisdiction of the writ of error under section 237 of the Judicial Code (Comp. St. 1214).
The grants were in fee simple. The grantees respectively covenanted that they would, upon the request of the city, build bulkheads, wharves, streets, and avenues to form part of Twelfth and Thirteenth avenues, and Thirty-Ninth, Fortieth, an Forty-First streets, which were within the general description of the premises conveyed. These were excepted therefrom for public streets. The grantees agreed to pay the taxes on the lots lying between the streets. There was a covenant that they would not build the wharves, bulkheads, avenues, or streets previously mentioned until permission had been given by the city. The city covenanted that the grantees might have wharfage on the westerly side of the granted premises fronting on the Hudson river, excepting at the westerly ends of the cross streets, which was reserved for the city.
[271 U.S. 403, 412] 'The only lands expressly provided to be made by the ordinance are those constituting the piers, wharves, streets, and avenues, and since it is unnecessary in order to give the clause in question an office to perform, to extend it to lands outside of such streets, and to create a right unconnected with those clearly intended to be granted, it is in accordance with settled rules of interpretation to limit the effect of general language to the accomplishment of the object undoubtedly intended. ... If it be held that the words 'make land in conformity thereto,' as used in the ordinance, apply only to the lands necessary to form the piers, bulkheads, and streets, the defendant will not only be protected in all of the rights intended to be secured to it, but the grantee will receive the benefits of his purchase and the deed will be free from objection on account of the apparent repugnancy existing between the interest actually conveyed and those apparently reserved.
We cannot agree with this. We think the reasons advanced by that court in the second Duryea Case to sustain the opposite construction of the deed and ordinance are much more persuasive. It has added force when it appears from the opinion in the Duryea Case and the conclusion of the Appellate Division in this case that such construction of such deeds and the ordinance has become a rule of property for more than 50 years. It is not reasonable to suppose that the grantees would pay $12,000 in 1852 and 1853, and leave to the city authorities the absolute right completely to nullify the chief consideration for seeking this property in making dry land, or that the parties then took that view of the transaction. In addition to the down payment, the grantees or their successors have paid the taxes assessed by the city for 75 years, which have evidently amounted to much more than $70,000. It does not seem fair to us, after these taxes have been paid for 60 years, in the confidence justified by the decision of the highest state court, that there was the full right to fill in at the pleasure of the grantees and without the consent of the city, now to hold that all this expenditure may go for naught at the pleasure of the city.
If the sinking fund ordinance is to be applied at all to the filling in of the land in the limits within the deeds, it should in our judgment be regarded as a mere police [271 U.S. 403, 414] requirement of a permit incident to the filling and to supervising its execution by regulation as to time and method, so that it should not disturb the public order. Had the refusal of the commissioner of docks, charged with the police regulation as to the docks, taken this form, an application for mandamus might well have been denied, because only an effort to control the police discretion of the public authorities; but the refusal to permit the filling to begin is not put on any such ground. It is denied because the city has a different plan, which does not permit the filling at all. This is an assertion of the right of the city absolutely to prevent the filling which is an impairment of the obligation of the contract, made by the city with these plaintiffs, in violation of the Constitution of the United States.
The judgment of the Supreme Court is reversed, and the case remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

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