Court Opinion

ID: 9559027
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:21:01.794111+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:43.247304
License: Public Domain

*840Finley, J.
(dissenting) — The majority opinion commences by ably reviewing the significant facts in the history of the efforts of the Port of Seattle and other public and private groups to plan intelligently for the future industrial development and economic welfare of the Puget Sound area, the state of Washington and the citizenry thereof.
Thereupon, the majority discusses at some length the “marginal lánds” concept of the 1955 Act (Laws of 1955, chapter 73, p. 429 (RCW 53.25)). This concept, apparently, was borrowed from modern slum-clearance legislation enacted elsewhere, and its presence in the 1955 Act is a bit jarring, to say the least. Perhaps the answer lies in the 'effort of the legal draftsman attempting to confer some 'semblance of orthodoxy or acceptance upon the unusual, if not actually unorthodox, yet challenging program of industrial development envisioned by our legislature.
But whatever its ancestry, I agree with the majority that the importation of the concept via the 1955 Act is not convincing, and that it does not change the basic picture respecting the constitutionality of the legislation and the program of industrial development contemplated thereunder. With all deference to the majority, it appears to me that (1) a straw man, legal or otherwise, is still a straw man, and (2) that the marginal lands concept of the 1955 Act actually is undeserving of the studious annihilation afforded by the majority opinion.
I see little reason to say more about the “marginal lands” notions of the 1955 Act. However, I believe § 10 of the Act is significant, and its discussion, consequently, seems to me more to the point. As to this portion of the Act, the majority opinion reads:
“Section 10 enumerates the powers of port districts which have created industrial development districts. These powers include authority to acquire by purchase or condemnation, or both, all lands, property, and property rights necessary for the development and improvement of such industrial development district, and
*841“ ‘. . . to develop and improve the lands within such industrial development district to make the same suitable and available for industrial uses and purposes; to dredge, bulkhead, fill, grade, and protect such property; to provide, maintain, and operate water, light, power and fire protection facilities and services, streets, roads, bridges, highways, waterways, tracks, and rail and water transfer and terminal facilities and other harbor and industrial improvements; . . . ’ This section makes no reference to marginal lands.”
To my way of thinking, there can be no question that the legislature attempted in § 10 of the Act to confer upon port' districts all of the power and authority requisite for the implementation of the program of industrial development as contemplated by the Port of Seattle, and involved in the present litigation. So, the question before us is not whether the legislature has authorized the action contemplated by the Port of Seattle, but whether the action of the legislature itself, as well as the program of industrial development contemplated thereunder, transgresses the constitution of this state.
The majority opinion, and I think quite properly, states that our state constitution provides two specific safeguards for the property owner against arbitrary and dictatorial seizure of his land by the state; namely, the requirements (a) that just compensation be paid, and (b) that there be a judicial determination of public use before property may be taken by the state. (In connection with the latter, perhaps it should be noted at this point that amendment 9 provides that the matter of public use “. . . shall be a judicial question, and determined as such, without regard to any legislative assertion that the use is public.”)
The problem of constitutionality in the instant case does not involve the matter of just compensation. It does involve the question of whether the use contemplated by the Port of Seattle can be judicially recognized as a public rather than a private use. I daresay that all would agree that the term public use is not clearly and specifically defined in our state constitution; furthermore, that the term today, properly and recognizably, has a considerably dif*842ferent meaning in practice and application than it had fifty years ago. This is not to say that the term as used in the constitution had a well understood but limited and restrictive meaning at the time it became an integral part of our constitution. In Stewart v. Great Northern R. Co., 65 Minn. 515, 68 N. W. 208, the court stated:
“The term ‘public use’ is flexible, and cannot be limited to the public use known at the time of the forming of the constitution. Any use of anything which will satisfy a reasonable public demand for public facilities for travel or for transmission of intelligence or- commodities would be a public use. Mills, Em. Dom. § 21.”
The very idea of taking private property for highways, schools, the development and transmission of electricity by both private and public entities, and for a number of other purposes which could be mentioned, may in some quarters a few years ago have seemed strange and surprising, but is recognized and accepted today as a proper function of government involving a public as contrasted to a private use. The Minnesota court, in State ex rel. Twin City Bldg. & Inv. Co. v. Houghton, 144 Minn. 1, 174 N. W. 885, 8 A. L. R. 585, stated:
“The notion of what is public use changes from time to time. Public use expands with the new needs created by the advance of civilization and the modern tendency of the people to crowd into large cities. Such a taking as here proposed could not possibly have been thought a taking for public use at the time of the adoption of our Constitution when the state was practically a wilderness without a single city worthy of the name. ‘The term “public use” is flexible, and cannot be limited to the public use known at the time of the forming of the Constitution.’ Stewart v. Great Northern Ry. Co., 65 Minn. 515, 68 N. W. 208, 33 L. R. A. 427. What constitutes a public use at the time it is sought to exercise the power of eminent domain is the test. The Constitution is as it was when adopted, but, when it employs, terms which change in definition as conditions change, it refers to them in the sense in which they are meant when the protection of the Constitution is sought.”
As noted above, amendment 9 to our constitution provides, in effect, for de novo judicial review of questions. *843of public use. However, this does not require mandatory, automatic, or arbitrary judicial veto of solemn determina-1 tions reached by the legislative branch of the state government. It certainly does not suggest simply a hasty substitution of personal judicial views and predilections for the deliberations, value-judgments and conclusions reached by the legislative branch.
Unless the situation is one where there can be little or no disagreement, the role of the judicial branch, although specifically made an independent one by amendment 9 of our state constitution, should be cautious and reticent. In the instant case it appears to me that there is reasonable, believable, and substantial ground for disagreement as to whether the use contemplated by the Port of Seattle— namely, the creation of industrial development districts — is a public one. As to this, I have in mind (a) statistics indicating a substantial and apparently continuing influx of people and population growth in the Seattle, Puget Sound area, (b) the imbalance and lack of diversification in the present economy occasioned by the present heavy emphasis upon aircraft and air missile defense production, and (c) the evaluations of this situation by qualified economists and others trained and experienced in related fields.
The majority have concluded that the creation and establishment of industrial development districts involves a private rather than a public use. I cannot agree. In this connection it appears to me that there is little point in referring to judicial decisions from other jurisdictions, since we are faced with economic facts and other data unique to this area, and with statutory and constitutional provisions, also essentially unique to our state. Nevertheless, I find considerable support for my views regarding this matter in the statement from Gohld Realty Co. v. Hartford (1954), 141 Conn. 135, 104 A. (2d) 365, reading as follows:
“ ‘In this State it is settled that public use means “public usefulness, utility or advantage, or what is productive of general benefit; so that any appropriating of private property by the State under its right of eminent domain for purposes of great advantage to the community, is a taking for *844public use.” Olmstead v. Camp, 33 Conn. 532, 546; Todd v. Austin, 34 Conn. 78. . . . ’ ”
On the basis of the foregoing, I dissent.
' Mallery and Hunter, JJ., concur with Finley, J.
August 14, 1959. Petition for rehearing denied.