Court Opinion

ID: 9575446
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:13:49.647762+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:48:11.720841
License: Public Domain

ELLETT, Justice
(dissenting):
I dissent. The questions presented to us by this appeal are set out in appellants’ assignments of error, to wit:
Point I. Appellants have vested right in dedicated street.
Point II. Appellants were deprived of property rights without due process of law.
They did not claim that there was any error in giving the vacated street to the Board of Education.
The main opinion does not answer their contentions but pulls an unseen rabbit out of the hat in order to reverse the trial court. This should not be done. It is true that anything shown by the record may be considered in order to affirm a trial court1 even though it is not raised. However, the converse is not true. We do not search the record in order to reverse the trial court. Even so, I do not think the City violated any law by giving the ex-dedicated street to the abutting landowner. The Board of Education owned all of the land abutting on both sides of the abandoned street. If the City had no right to give the land to the Board of Education because title reverted to the owner prior to dedication, then the Board would get nothing by the gift. Since these appellants do not claim any rights of reversion, they have no grounds to complain. We should determine the rights of the Board of Education to the land in a case to quiet title brought by one claiming a better title.
Whether a street should or should not be abandoned is to be determined primarily by consideration of its necessity or public utility.2
*120The street involved in this case ran through the campus of the Ogden High School, and the closing thereof did not deprive any of the plaintiffs of access to their property. It at most only required them to deviate a few hundred feet if they wished to go directly west and none at all for any other direction. The decision to vacate that part of the street which ran through the high school campus was based upon the public benefit as set out below:
1. It will improve the safety of vehicles and children on Harrison Boulevard by allowing relocation of the ball diamond and tennis courts so balls will not go into the boulevard with children going after them.
2. It will improve -the flow of traffic by reducing the crossings at 29th Street and Harrison Boulevard where there is no traffic light, and moves the traffic to 28th and 30th Streets at Harrison Boulevard where traffic signals are located.
3. It will increase the safety of students and those home activities at Ogden High School by making it so they can get to school without crossing a public street.
4. It substantially increases the safety and convenience of students and faculty of Ogden High School by removing a public street from this campus allowing safe and easy access from the school to its other facilities.
5. It doesn’t interfere with access to the other land east of the school or elsewhere.
The reasons given above are sufficient to justify the closing of the street, and plaintiffs have no basis for their claims of error in the court below. Whether the sole abutting landowner can use the abandoned street or whether it must purchase it from the City should not be considered in ascertaining whether the street can be abandoned and closed.
The general rule is that one whose property does not abut on the closed section has no right ordinarily to damages for vacation of a street if he still has reasonable access to the general system of streets.3
I would hold that the appellants have no vested rights in the abandoned portion of the street and have not been deprived of any property rights without due process of law.
CROCKETT, J., concurs in the views expressed in the dissenting opinion of EL-LETT, J.

. 5 C.J.S. Appeal and Error § 1464(1); Peterson v. Fowler, 29 Utah 2d 366, 510 P.2d 523 (1973).

. In re Hull, 163 Minn. 439, 204 N.W. 534 (1925).

. See cases collected in 49 A.L.R. beginning at page 333; Robinett v. Price, 74 Utah 512, 280 P. 736 (1929).