Court Opinion

ID: 9688371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 17:44:47.502025+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:37.899456
License: Public Domain

POPOVICH, Justice.
Petitioners John E. Castor, et al., (petitioners) sought an alternative writ of mandamus to compel condemnation proceedings by the City of Minneapolis (city), arising from the city’s construction of an enclosed pedestrian “skyway” adjacent to petitioner’s office building. The district court dismissed the petition, and the court of appeals affirmed, on the ground that any damage to petitioner’s easements of light, view and air was not compensable because the elevated pedestrian walkway over a public alley constitutes a proper street use. We find the skyway in this case unreasonably impairs petitioners’ easements, and therefore reverse.
I.
The facts are not in dispute. Petitioners own the Barristers Trust Building, a two-story office building in downtown Minneapolis. The building fronts on Third Avenue, and abuts a public alley that runs through the middle of the block between Third and Fourth Avenues. In or around 1983, the city constructed an elevated pe*245destrian walkway, or “skyway,” above the alley. The skyway is a permanent enclosed structure that runs the entire length of petitioner’s building, standing about four or five feet away. The skyway is about 14 feet wide and is built entirely over the 20-foot-wide public alley below. The supporting pillars of the skyway leave room for vehicles and foot traffic to pass through the alley. The skyway does not provide access to the Barristers Trust Building, by petitioners’ choice.
The skyway was built to connect the Gateway Municipal Parking Ramp and Bus Layover Terminal, located between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, with the central sky-way system through access to the Norwest Operations Center on Third Avenue. The record shows that the skyway system facilitates pedestrian access to various commercial and public buildings.
In 1986, petitioners filed an alternative writ of mandamus to compel initiation of condemnation proceedings. Their appraisal expert opined by affidavit that the skyway decreased the Barristers Trust Building’s market value by approximately $70,000. After a mandamus hearing, the district court dismissed the petition with prejudice, finding the skyway a proper street use and any damages not compensable. The court of appeals, with one dissent, agreed. Castor v. City of Minneapolis, 415 N.W.2d 739 (Minn.App.1987). We granted review.
II.
At the outset, the parties dispute the proper standard of review in this case. The facts, though, are undisputed, and the question presented is purely a question of law. When reviewing questions of law, this court gives no deference to the courts below. See A.J. Chromy Const. Co. v. Commercial Mechanical Services, Inc., 260 N.W.2d 579, 582 (Minn.1977).
III.
The issue before us is whether the city has potentially “taken” petitioners’ property without just compensation. As the city concedes, a landowner owning property abutting a public street possesses implied easements appurtenant to the lot for light, air, and view over the public street. Haeussler v. Braun, 314 N.W.2d 4, 7 (Minn.1981). The abutting landowner also possesses the same easement over a public alley. See McCarthy v. City of Minneapolis, 203 Minn. 427, 430, 281 N.W. 759, 761 (1938). These implied easements extend to the full width of the street and are independent of any fee interest in the street held by the landowner. Haeussler, 314 N.W.2d at 7. They are “property” within the meaning of Article 1, § 13, of the Minnesota Constitution.1 See Adams v. Chicago, Burlington & Northern Railway, 39 Minn. 286, 290, 39 N.W. 629, 631 (1888).
The abutting owner’s property interest is not absolute; it is qualified by and subservient to the public easement in the roadway. Haeussler, 314 N.W.2d at 7. But the public right, too, has limits. The public “cannot go beyond, but must be confined within, the general purpose for which the easement was granted * *." Cater v. Northwestern Telephone Exchange Co., 60 Minn. 539, 543, 63 N.W. 111, 112 (1895). When the light, air and view over a public street are obstructed by improper street uses, an additional servitude is deemed to be placed on the property owner’s implied easements and a taking can be found. Haeussler, 314 N.W.2d at 8.
This court long ago recognized the impracticality of a universal test to determine what constitutes a proper street or highway use. In Cater, we resolved to “keep in mind the general purpose of highways, and adopt a gradual process of inclusion and exclusion as cases arise.” Cater, 60 Minn. at 545, 63 N.W. at 113. The highway purpose is expansive, accommodating growth and change in transportation and the “transmission of intelligence.” Id.; Haeussler, 314 N.W.2d at 7. Even innovative uses impose no additional servitude *246“provided they are not inconsistent with the reasonably safe and practical use of the highway in other and usual and necessary modes, and provided they do not unreasonably impair the special easements of abutting owners in the street for purposes of access, light and air.” Cater, 60 Minn. at 545, 63 N.W. at 113 (emphasis added). Thus, whether any given use is “proper”— in the sense that it works no taking of abutting landowners’ rights — turns on the circumstance of each case.
The contested activity in Cater was construction of a telephone line along a rural highway, with poles at 170-foot intervals. This court found the line was “within the general purpose for which highways are designed,” and it was “common knowledge” that such lines along a county road do not significantly interfere with either public travel or abutting landowners' easements. Cater, 60 Minn. at 545-46, 63 N.W. at 113. More recently, in Haeussler, we found that certain sound barriers built along an urban interstate highway imposed no additional servitude. While the approximately 20-foot tall barriers interfered with petitioners’ property 53-55 feet away, we stressed that the barriers resulted from vehicular use of the highway and in fact were constructed pursuant to statutes governing traffic noise abatement. Haeussler, 314 N.W.2d at 8-9. Indeed, we observed, failure to build the barriers “might well result in a finding that the state has taken the abutting landowners’ properties for a public purpose, the operation of a highway, by not checking the noise attributable to the highway.” Id at 9.
On the other hand, a commercial railroad on a city street constituted a “perversion of the street to uses for which it was not intended * * *.” Adams v. Chicago, Burlington & Northern Railway, 39 Minn. 286, 295, 39 N.W. 629, 634 (1888). As the Cater court later explained, the railroad subverted public use of the street and also unreasonably impaired the special easements of abutting owners. Cater, 60 Minn. at 545, 63 N.W. at 113.
The skyway in this case undoubtedly fulfills a legitimate public purpose. But to say the public benefits is not to say this unusual structure constitutes a proper street use. The block-long skyway runs the entire length of petitioners’ building rather than simply across the alley. It stands four to five feet from the building and entirely obliterates the space above the alley, adjacent to petitioners’ second-story windows. This is not, as telephone lines were in 1895, simply “a newly-discovered method of using the old public easement.” Cater, 60 Minn. at 548, 63 N.W. at 114. We find something closer to appropriation of the alley, at petitioners’ expense.
Nor is this particular skyway a logical and necessary outgrowth of the underlying public easement, as were the sound barriers in Haeussler. The alley in this case provides rear lot access through the center of the block. It is narrower than the surrounding streets and was obviously not meant to be used as a thoroughfare comparable to a street. The skyway appropriates alley space with an unrelated (albeit generally public) use. In so doing, it deprives the adjacent building occupants of air, light and view.
The critical question is not the public purpose involved or the city’s entitlement to take petitioners’ property, but whether that taking is compensable. The design and construction of this skyway creates an additional servitude beyond that imposed by the public easement inherent in the alley. We hold the skyway in this case is not a proper street or alley use, and petitioners are entitled to compel condemnation proceedings.
REVERSED.
SIMONETT and COYNE, JJ., concur specially.
WAHL, J., dissenting.

. Article 1, § 13, of the Minnesota Constitution provides: “Private property shall not be taken, destroyed or damaged for public use without just compensation, therefor, first paid or secured."