Court Opinion

ID: 9681695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:54:57.788569+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:35.482786
License: Public Domain

HAWTHORNE, Justice (dissenting from refusal to grant a rehearing).
The effect of the decision in this case is to extend the servitude established by Article 665 of the Civil Code beyond the limits prescribed for it by the jurisprudence of this court of the last 50 years, or to hold that the servitude has been extended by Article 16, Section 6, of the Louisiana Constitution, so as to make subject to it any prop*871erty in the State of Louisiana which a levee hoard may deem necessary for levees or levee drainage, and that consequently such property may he appropriated. Under Article 665 a servitude is imposed on property adjacent to a navigable stream, and such property may be appropriated because in this state it has always been reserved to the public and is always acquired subject to the •servitude. See Eldridge v. Trezevant, 160 U.S. 452, 16 S.Ct. 345, 40 L.Ed. 490. Can it be said that property situated 17 miles from a navigable stream is adjacent to it and subject to appropriation by the levee board for the purpose of digging a drainage canal for levee drainage?
■If Article 16, Section 6, extended the servitude recognized in Article 665 of the ■Code, and the property in the instant case is burdened with such servitude (of this I have grave doubt), and the levee board has the right to appropriate it, then does our constitutional article violate the provision •of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution that no state shall deprive any person of property without due process of law? Article 16, Section 6, of the Louisiana Constitution fixes the price for property actually used or destroyed for levees or levee drainage at the assessed valuation, but, as pointed out in Wolfe v. Hurley, D.C., 46 F.2d 515, affirmed by the United States Supreme Court, 283 U.S. 801, 51 S.Ct. 493, 75 L.Ed. 1423, the price so fixed is nothing but a gratuity because the state had a right to appropriate property adjacent to navigable streams without any compensation under Article 665. The assessed value certainly is not just and adequate compensation.
The right of the levee board to expropriate the property to be used for the drainage canal is not questioned. The serious question here presented is whether the property because of its nature and location was acquired subject to the servitude imposed by Article 665. If so, the levee board may appropriate it without violating the provision of the United States Constitution.
Since I consider that a serious federal constitutional question is involved, I am of the opinion that a rehearing should have been granted so that this court might give further consideration to the question.