Court Opinion

ID: 9558606
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:13:33.285007+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:26.667910
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent, agreeing with everything stated in Mr. Justice Callister’s dissenting opinion.
The main opinion completely ignores property rights on the flimsiest kind of evidence. It has the effect of giving a recalcitrant property owner a private right of eminent domain by the simple device of testifying to an inadmissible conclusion that he had seen the general public (?) use this narrow, almost tree-canopied alley. He was bolstered by a friend in the neighborhood, on an entirely different street frontage who must have acquired a bad case of eyestrain to see the general public using this tenfoot alley having the crooked appearance of a dog’s hind leg.
The subjoined photo reflects the nature and extent of this alley which the main opinion approves as a “public thoroughfare.” 1 One- cannot see but part of the alley since it “meanders” by way of two separate right angle crooks, ending abruptly in a dead end only 125 yards from its entrance. The subjoined replica2 of the official plat covering this alley shows in the middle thereof the letters “R of W,” which any abstracter knows means “Right of Way,” which any title attorney knows means a “Private Way” and not a “Public Thoroughfare.” This is the official, approved plat. The main opinion, in referring to city records, says that “the official records of the city show that the area in dispute to have been platted, as a public street.” This statement appears to be quite inaccurate since there was no exhibit introduced to substantiate it. The only official, approved plat shows exactly the antithesis. The main opinion arrives at its unwarranted conclusion, apparently, by referring to a library index card3 unauthenticated, un-signatured and unsealed in any way, that refers to location of streets, prepared by who knows whom, — perhaps a flunky, with loose fingers on a loose typewriter, but without any seal, — official recordation or authentication of any kind. This is Exhibit 12, pictured herein, the only evidence, highly inadmissible, to prove or tend to prove a public thoroughfare, upon which .the main opinion hangs its hat, in saying that “the official record of the city shows that *151the area in dispute to have been platted as a public street.” This court should respect the intelligence of a title examiner by not indulging such inaccuracy.

*152Now: Let’s look at the main opinion some more. It admits that this “thoroughfare” was nothing hut an alley, — crooked as a sidewinder, ending in a cul-de-sac, with no place else to go. It makes a point that plaintiff paid no taxes on this God forsaken trail as a reason for declaring it a “thoroughfare.” This is strange and novel doctrine since it means that if I don’t pay the taxes on my home for ten years, it is then open ground for the public, teenagers and a receptacle for beer bottles. It says some witnesses have seen postmen go up and down the alley. They are not the general public. They are postmen and invitees. It cites milkmen as using the alley. Same thing, and to classify them as even part of the “general public” is absurd. Same with delivery trucks. Same with children going to school. The “various others” are not specified in the main opinion, — and can’t be. It is complete evasion to say, as does the main opinion that “We do not burden this opinion with more extensive quotation of the testimony,”. — because it would be useless under the reasoning of the opinion which, in order to reach a desired result, apparently ignores property rights completely. It is most startling to observe that the main opinion sloughs the' whole thing off by a generality that “when the various favorable aspects of the evidence are so considered in the aggregate * * * the situation impresses us as being about as substantial in support of them as ever will be found where there is any controversy at all.” This is an ipse dixit understatement, since taking out the milkman, the deliveryman, the postman, kids going to school, no public record of a platted public thoroughfare or street, and the myopic, inadmissible evidence of a neighbor across the street (about 120 feet wide, — not on the alley), and the inadmissibility of a self-serving witness verbally wandering about without specificity about the “general public,” — there isn’t any evidence left to show that this obscure alley is in any sense a thoroughfare.
The main opinion may cause concern to Salt Lake City, only a nominal party to this action, when the City learns that it may be required to pave and maintain this ten foot “thoroughfare” alley,. — also to install street lighting, — also to have its garbage crews go into the now public thoroughfare to pick up the garbage instead of requiring the residents of property abutting the public thoroughfare to carry it to Sixth South, which they have been doing in the past. The City may now have an obligation to curb, gutter and sidewalk this public street. A three foot sidewalk on each side thereof would restrict the general public’s ability to travel this public street to four feet, — a comfortable freeway for bicycles, skate-boards and wheelchairs, if there were no oncoming traffic, — in which event even a traffic semaphore installed by the City would not solve the traffic problem, except for ingress and egress for small children going to school.
*153This author knows this alley, tried to drive upon it, couldn’t even get to the cul-de-sac, having some difficulty getting ■out of it in a compact Corvair.
The dictionaries say a public thoroughfare is something to let people go through, — ■ not bat their heads against, as is the -case here. In my opinion to dub this ten foot alley a public thoroughfare is to insult rabbits, dogs, small badgers and quail.
This case should be reversed, else people ■should keep the kids, the milkmen, the postmen and deliverymen out of their driveways.

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