Court Opinion

ID: 9568964
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:09:06.498388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:17:30.283160
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Chief Justice,
concurring in result.
I recognize that Justice Sandstrom’s dissent may be prescient, but it is unclear to me what measure the trial court would use to determine if costs are to be allocated and, more specifically, how the allocations of those costs vrould be made.
If we were to analogize to special assessments for improvements, such as for cities as set forth in section 40-23-07, NDCC, with the construction placed on that procedure through the many court decisions, the duty of the trial court might be clearer. However, I do not agree that is the proper analogy. The special assessment analogy would subsume section 61-16.1-42, NDCC, in that the railroad would contend that the enlarging of the channel would not benefit the railroad property and could result in a determination of no benefit to the railroad and no payment by the railroad contrary to the majority’s construction of section 61-16.1^42, NDCC, a construction with which I agree.
There is no doubt that North Dakota has historically considered railroads separate and apart from ordinary corporations. See, e.g., Article XII, § 11-14, N.D. Const. See also Article XIII, § 1(2), N.D. Const, [compact with United States providing for distribution of taxes on railroad gross earnings between North Dakota and South Dakota],
The reason for separate treatment of railroads is their special status in the develop*897ment of our State. Railroads were instrumental if not integral to populating North Dakota. Because of this significance to settlement of the State, some railroads were given land grants by Congress for extending their rail lines through North Dakota, as well as other western states, and for the benefits resulting from that extension. Many of the benefits and many of the problems our State faces today, at least demographically, are due to the foresight or lack thereof, of the railroads.
In considering what is fair and reasonable, I suggest a factor for consideration would be whether or not the railroad received land grants in North Dakota from Congress to extend or build railroads in North Dakota and what, if any, benefits the railroads are currently providing to the area served by the enlargement of the channel.
However, unless there is clear direction from the United States Supreme Court as to what is meant by its statement in Nashville, C. & St. L. Ry. v. Walters, 294 U.S. 405, 55 S.Ct. 486, 79 L.Ed. 949 (1935) about “arbitrary and unreasonable imposition” of costs, Walters, 294 U.S. at 428, 55 S.Ct. at 494, and what factors are to be considered in determining whether an allocation of costs to the railroad is, as stated in the dissent, “fair and reasonable under all of the circumstances,” I will adhere to the result reached by the majority. It is not apparent to me that Walters and its progeny which rely, at least in part, on the unfairness of requiring the railroad to improve a highway for the benefit of trucks, the competition for the railroad, applies in this case where competition is not a factor.
Finally, the majority’s result retains the construction of section 61-16.1-42, NDCC, which the dissent agrees “places solely upon the railroad company the responsibility for payment of the costs of building and maintaining bridges and culverts where a drain intersects a railroad.” I recognize that if a statute is susceptible of more than one construction, one that would make it of doubtful constitutionality and another that would not, we will adopt the construction which sustains its constitutionality. E.g., Little v. Graff, 507 N.W.2d 55 (N.D.1993). But, I am not convinced that under Walters and its progeny, this statute, as applied to the facts of this case, is of doubtful constitutionality.
I concur in the result reached by the majority opinion.