Case Name: ERIE RAILROAD COMPANY, PATERSON, NEWARK AND NEW YORK RAILROAD COMPANY AND THE NEWARK AND HUDSON RAILROAD COMPANY, PROSECUTORS, v. THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF THE CITY OF NEWARK, RESPONDENTS
Court: New Jersey Supreme Court
Jurisdiction: New Jersey
Decision Date: 1924-03-12
Citations: 2 N.J. Misc. 220
Docket Number: 
Parties: ERIE RAILROAD COMPANY, PATERSON, NEWARK AND NEW YORK RAILROAD COMPANY AND THE NEWARK AND HUDSON RAILROAD COMPANY, PROSECUTORS, v. THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF THE CITY OF NEWARK, RESPONDENTS.
Judges: 
Reporter: New Jersey Miscellaneous Reports
Volume: 2
Pages: 220–221

Head Matter:
ERIE RAILROAD COMPANY, PATERSON, NEWARK AND NEW YORK RAILROAD COMPANY AND THE NEWARK AND HUDSON RAILROAD COMPANY, PROSECUTORS, v. THE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS OF THE CITY OF NEWARK, RESPONDENTS.
Submitted December 3, 1923
Decided March 12, 1924.
Assessment of Benefits — Railroad Property Located More Than 1,200 Feet From the Street Opened, For Which Assessment Was Made — Assessment Can Be Only For Actual Benefits Conferred.
On certiorari.
Before Justices Trenchard and Campbell
Eor the prosecutors, Parker, Emery & Van Riper.
For the respondents, Jerome T. Gongleton.

Opinion:
Per Curiam.
This writ of certiorari brings up for review assessments for benefits against four plots of land of the prosecutors used for railroad purposes.
The improvement, for which the assessments were levied, was the opening of Crittenden street from Rowland street to Bloomfield avenue, in the city of Newark.
The improvement is upwards of twelve hundred feet from the land of prosecutors.
Five reasons are assigned by the prosecutors for setting aside the assessments. Two only are urged, namely:
1. The prosecutors' property is used for railroad purposes and derives no special benefit, for the uses to which it is devoted, from the opening of Crittenden street.
2. Even if there was any special benefit for railroad purposes, the assessment was excessive.
The rule of assessment to be applied to properties used for, and devoted to, railroad purposes, is that such lands may be assessed to the extent only of actual benefits conferred upon them for the public use to which they are devoted by the improvement under which the assessments are sought to be levied. Erie Railroad Co. v. Paterson, 72 N. J. L. 83; Lehigh Valley Railroad Co. v. Jersey City, 81 Id. 290; New York Bay Railroad Co. v. Newark, 82 Id. 591; Erie Railroad Co. v. Newark, 93 Id. 90.
We think no such benefit accrued to the lands in question, and if any did, then, as was said in Erie Railroad Co. v. Newark, supra, "the special benefit resulting from railroad use, if any, is problematical, and so remote as to be almost entirely the subject of conjecture."
The assessments are therefore set aside, with costs.