Court Opinion

ID: 9673070
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:05:49.590938+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:19.898393
License: Public Domain

McGehee, C. J.,
Dissenting:
The controlling opinion herein states in the first paragraph thereof that the principal point made by the appellants is that the Act in question “violates Section 17, Miss. Constitution of 1890, because, they assert, it empowers the District to acquire private property by condemnation, not for a public use, and then to rent, lease, or sell it for private use. ’ ’ And it is then further stated “We do not agree with that interpretation of the statute or the other assignments of error”. With deference, I agree with the first foregoing quoted statement, and I therefore respectfully dissent from the decision being rendered herein. The Act affirmatively discloses on its face in Section 11 thereof that it empowers the District to do what the appellants contend.
Subsection (f) of Section 11 of Senate Bill 1724 (Advance Sheet 13) Laws of 1958, provides that the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District may “acquire by condemnation any and all property of any kind, real, .personal, or mixed, or any interest therein within the project (reservior) area not exceeding one-quarter mile from the outside line of the 300 foot above sea level contour on each side of Pearl River, * * *.”
*826And the second paragraph, of Subsection (f) (3) of Section 11 reads as follows: “Provided further that where any site or plot of land is to be rented, leased or sold to any person, firm or corporation for the purpose of operating recreational facilities thereon for profit, then the Board shall, by resolution, specify the terms and conditions of such sale, rental or lease, and shall advertise for public bids thereon. When such bids are received, the same shall be publicly opened by the Board, and the Board shall thereupon determine the highest and best bid submitted, and shall immediately notify the former owner of such site or plot of the amount, terms and conditions of such highest and best bids. Such former owner of such site or plot shall have the exclusive right at his option, for a period of thirty (30) days after the determination of the highest and best bid by the Board, to rent, lease or purchase said site or plot of land, by meeting such highest and best bid, and by complying with all terms and conditions of such renting, leasing, or sale, as specified by the Board; provided, however, the Board shall not in any event, rent, lease or sell to any former owner more land than was tahen from such former owner for the construction of the project, or one-quarter mile of shore-line, whichever shall be the lesser. If such option is not exercised by such former owner within said period of thirty (30) days, then the Board shall accept the highest and best bid submitted.” (Italics mine). It will be noted that the italicized portion of this provision of the Act, following the semi-colon, prevents the Board from renting, leasing, or selling to any former owner more land than was taken from such former owner for the construction of the project, or one-quarter mile of shore-line, whichever shall be the lesser. The first clause above italicized, following the semi-colon, refers to the area of land that may be sold to a former owner, whereas the last clause thereof refers to the distance from the shore-line beyond which a former owner may reacquire *827any of the land taken from him, “whichever shall be the lesser”. As to what these last quoted five words mean no one has ventured to express a thought. My own best notion as to what the Act means to say is that the District intends to preclude a former- owner of any of the perimeter land from acquiring any portion thereof within a quarter of a mile of the shore-line of the reservoir, under any circumstances, and that the District intends that only those persons whom they choose shall be permitted to rent, lease, or purchase any portion of the perimeter lands within a quarter of a mile of the shore-line, and that they can acquire it only “for the purpose of operating recreational facilities thereon for profit”. The Act provides for this authority on the part of the District by its terms.
It is true that elsewhere in the Act, Subsection (x) of Section 11, provides that “Any bona fide, resident householder, actually living or maintaining a residence on land taken by the District by condemnation shall have the right to repurchase not exceeding forty (40) acres of his former land or other available land from the Board of Directors for a price not exceeding the price paid for condemning his land. ’ ’ This, of course, has reference to land located beyond one-quarter of a mile from the shoreline.
It is apparently recognized by the controlling opinion herein, in the first paragraph thereof, that if the Act “empowers the District to acquire private property by condemnation, not for a public, use, and then to rent, lease or sell it for private use,” this would be in violation of Section 17 of the Mississippi Constitution of 1890.
Subsection (w) of Section 11 of the Act provides that: “When in the opinion of the Board of Directors as shown by resolution duly passed, it shall not be necessary to the carrying on of the business of the District that the District own any lands acquired, then the Board shall advertise such lands for sale to the highest and best bid*828der for cash, * * * .” It is obvious that under this provision of the Act the Board of Directors may determine that any portion, or even the greater part, of the perimeter lands within one-quarter of a mile from shore-line is not necessary to the carrying on of the business of the District, and then proceed to advertise and sell the same for private use, unless as provided for under the second paragraph of subsection (f) (3) a former owner desires to rent, lease or purchase the same for the purpose of operating recreational facilities thereon for profit, “by complying with all terms and conditions prescribed by the Board”. There is nothing in the Act to prevent those ‘£ terms and conditions ’ ’ being such that a former owner cannot afford to match the highest and best bid for the land.
Section 17 of the Constitution of 1890 provides in full as follows: “Private property shall not be taken or damaged for public use, except on due compensation being first made to the owner or owners thereof, in a manner to be prescribed by law; and whenever an attempt is made to take private property for a use alleged to be public, the question whether the contemplated use be public shall be a judicial question, and, as such, determined without regard to legislative assertion that the use is public.”
The chancellor recognized in his opinion dictated into the record that the “objections (of the appellants) that have been made at this hearing are not as to the creation of the Pearl Eiver Water Supply District itself. The objections go to the question, of course, of the value of the lands, and also the question of the taking of particular lands, whether the use for which such lands would be taken would be a public use, and as the Court sees it, that would be a judicial question to be determined in a court of eminent domain, and is not in issue in this proceeding. ’ ’
*829Nevertheless the controlling opinion herein states in its 58th paragraph the following: “Under Const. Sec. 17 the question of whether the land taken is for a public use is a judicial question. We adjudicate here that the one-quarter mile perimeter area, if taken by eminent domain, will be for a public use. The undisputed evidence so shows.” (Italics mine). This Court is, in my opinion, without authority to make the foregoing adjudication in this proceeding for the following reasons: First, the chancellor found among other things that the question of the taking of particular lands, whether the use for which such lands would be taken would be a public use, would be a judicial question to be determined in a court of eminent domain, and is not in issue in this proceeding. And second, the owners of the perimeter lands were not made parties to this proceeding. The Counties of Hinds, Madison, Leake, Rankin and Scott, the City of Jackson and the Board of Water Commissioners of the State of Mississippi were the sole defendants. In fact the fourth paragraph of Subsection (d) of Section 5 of the Act in question undertakes to provide that “it shall not be necessary that any land owners in the counties to be included in said proposed district be named in the petition, or made parties defendant.” Therefore, I think the chancellor correctly observed that the question of whether the use for which such lands would be taken would be a public use, would be a judicial question to be determined in a court of eminent domain, and is not in issue in this proceeding.
. Then, too, at the very threshhold of any suit in eminent domain the landowner is entitled to litigate the issue as to whether the use for which his lands are to be taken would be a public use. But we are asked in effect on this appeal to render a declaratory judgment, which we have no jurisdiction to do, or an advisory opinion as to whether the lands within one-quarter of a mile of the shore-line of the reservoir are being taken for a public *830use, and without regard to what the several landowners may be able to show in defense of a suit in eminent domain. In other words, in the eminent domain case, referred to by the chancellor in his opinion, the landowner will be confronted with an adjudication by this Court that one of the main issues in the eminent domain proceeding may have been already foreclosed. Since the perimeter lands are located in the five counties, and since only two of the landowners intervened in the trial court in this case, and since their objections were held by the chancellor to be properly determined (in the future) in a court of eminent domain, and were not in issue in this proceeding, and since all of the adjacent landowners are to be affected by the majority opinion, assuming, but not conceding, that we have any jurisdiction of them without process to decide as to whether the land within one-quarter of a mile of the shore-line of the reservoir have been adjudicated on this appeal, if taken by eminent domain, to be for a public use, then the said Senate Bill 1724, Laws of 1958, as applied to such landowners is clearly unconstitutional as being the taking of private property without due process of law contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and Sections 14 and 17 of the Mississippi Constitution.
Moreover Subsection (h) of Section 11 of the Act purports to grant authority to the District “to overflow and inundate any public lands and public property, including sixteenth section lands, and in lieu lands within the project area.” Section 31 of the Act does provide that “the District shall pay a reasonable rental for the use of such lands to be overflowed, to be determined as provided by law in such cases.” It is conceded that three sixteenth sections of land are to be overflowed in whole or in part, but by a depth of not more than 300 feet of water, and since a reasonable rental value for the use of such lands would be determined as provided by law in such cases, it can reasonably be expected that *831since the rental value of such land is determined by what would be a fair rent from year to year during the forty year life of the District,-there is nothing in the Act that would protect the interest of the educable children of the townships if the successors in office to the present Board of Directors should determine that the reasonable rental would only be a nominal sum with the land ■inundated. In other words, the two provisions of the Act hereinabove last quoted grant the authority for these sixteenth sections to be virtually destroyed, notwithstanding the fanciful declaration of Section 13 that the overflowing and inundation of these sixteenth sections shall not constitute legal waste.
• The chancellor found on an abundance of testimony that the construction of the intended project was feasible from an engineering standpoint. With a bond issue of $24,200,000 for use for the purpose, I am not prepared to say that most any project would be feasible from an engineering standpoint.
The Act also provides that in addition to the counties of Hinds, Madison, Leake, Rankin and Scott and all other counties through which Pearl River runs or constitutes a boundary of may come into the District, which could include Copiah, Simpson, Lawrence, Marion, Pearl River and Hancock Counties. And Section 16 of the Act provides that “so long as any bonds issued hereunder are outstanding, the tax collector of each county shall pay into the depository selected by said Water District for said purpose the amount of two mills of all the ad valorem taxes due by the county to the State of Mississippi which is collected by the sheriff and tax collector of the county.” In other words, contrary to the public policy of this state, if not in violation of Section 112 of our State Constitution, the Act provides for the exemption of eleven counties from a state two mill ad valorem tax levy. By the same token the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee District and the Mississippi Levee District would be entitled to an exemption from two mills of the state *832ad valorem tax levy. By a policy of carving ont of the domain of the state one group of counties after another, the eventual result would be to deprive the state of the revenue for the operation of the expenses of the state government so far as two mills of the state ad valorem tax levy is concerned.
Section 24 of the Act undertakes to usurp the functions of the governing bodies of counties, cities, towns, school districts, banks, savings banks, trust companies, building and loan associations, savings and loan associations and insurance companies in regard to the safe keeping of public funds, by declaring that the bonds of the District are authorized investments of such funds, including the funds of the Mississippi Public Employees Retirement System, and without regard to the judgment and discretion of the local governing bodies or particular agencies charged with the responsibility of guarding the safety of such funds.
As stated in the controlling opinion herein the Act contains approximately 19 printed pages and 33 sections, but I shall not prolong this opinion by undertaking to elaborate on all of the objections to the validity of this Act that occur to me, but in conclusion I shall point out that the chapter on Eminent Domain in the Code of 1942 is not sought to be amended by any of the provisions of the Act in question. Section 2760, Code of 1942, in the chapter on Eminent Domain, prescribes the form of an instruction which shall be given to the jury in every eminent domain case, and among other things that instruction tells the jury that “you are not to deduct therefrom (the damages to the landowner) anything on account of the supposed benefits incident to the public use for which the application is made.” In other words, it is contemplated that the landowner is entitled to receive, free of cost to him, any increased value to his property that may result from the contemplated improvement, but the landowner is so hamstrung by the provisions of the Act in question that he, rather than someone else, will *833not be able to receive, except to a very limited degree, the increased benefits that may come to his land by reason of the construction of this project.
Further the Act is, in my opinion, unconstitutional wherein it authorizes this District to require the necessary relocation of roads and highways, etc; whereas the State Constitution vests the full jurisdiction over the roads and highways in the boards of supervisors and the State Highway Commission. How this jurisdiction can be taken away from these bodies without a constitutional amendment I am unable to comprehend.
The Act in question is so far-reaching that it even presumes to declare in Section 32 thereof that: “Nothing in this Act shall be construed to violate any provision of the federal or state constitutions * * V’ Since the majority opinion is controlling in this cause I assume that I have not violated this injunction.
Of course every good citizen is in favor of any valid legislation designed to promote the industrial, agricultural, recreational, public health and general welfare of the state, but I am unable to vote to uphold the constitutionality of the Act in question for the reasons hereinbefore stated and for other reasons not necessary to enumerate in a review of this very lengthy and far-reaching statute.