Court Opinion

ID: 9755855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:56:10.052435+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:12.274008
License: Public Domain

Tunnell,
Justice (dissenting) :
I am in complete accord with the finding of my colleagues that in so far as this law authorizes a state agency to establish and operate a needed automobile parking facility, it does not offend against any constitutional principle. I also agree that Art. VIII, Sec. 8, of the Constitution, which forbids public agencies to invest in private corporations, has no application to the instant project. Our difference arises only when the parking proposal is coupled with a plan for the *477public agency also to enter into a business venture designed to make profits to offset the anticipated deficits of the parking facility.
The statement of facts in the majority opinion will not be repeated here.
The issue between us being fundamental in character, a discussion of it properly begins with fundamentals.
The preamble to the constitution declares that all men, “Through Divine goodness” and “by nature,” are vested with the right of “acquiring and protecting” property.
Under a system of government which attempts to protect property, the right to take property away from individuals by the devices of eminent domain and taxation is a matter of such delicacy that certain limitations are of necessity engrafted upon their use. Some of these limitations have been expressed in constitutions; some are merely implied. Yet the latter class are no less firm than the former, for it is often because they are indispensable that they have simply been taken for granted.
It appears to me that the right to prevent private persons from being squeezed out of their means of livelihood by a concern possessing the unique power to tax its competitors in order to assure its own survival is so essential to our concept of private property that it is, therefore, one of those limitations which literally underlie our constitution.
In Delaware, in respect to eminent domain, what the constitution expressly says is this, Art. I, Sec. 8:
“* * * nor shall any man’s property be taken or applied to public use without the consent of his representatives, and without compensation being made.”
It is apparent that this language follows upon two underlying assumptions: (1), that the government has the power to take private property, and (2), that it may be so taken only for a public purpose.
*478The reasons for assuming that tax money is a trust fund which may be spent only for public purposes are the same as those limiting the use of eminent domain. 51 Am.Jur., p. 375.
The finding that the construction of a facility to accommodate parked automobiles does not offend against the constitution is based upon affirmance of the finding that such a facility would in the circumstances be in the public interest and for a public purpose. But it is not even contended that the public interest requires any more space than we already have, or than private capital will provide, for offices and stores. Nor is there a claim that the leasing of space to particular tenants is in any way tied to the success of the parking project, as might be the case, for instance, if public use of the building for parking had to be encouraged by providing rental space for automobile supply and repair shops, gasoline stations, and the like. Ours is a plain case, therefore, where the only justification for calling the rental portion of this particular real estate investment a public use is that the public will get the profit from it. This argument has a seeming plausibility about it because the word “public” appears in two places. But is that enough ?
Traditionally it has been assumed that making money, of and by ■itself, was an activity reserved to private enterprise, and respectable authorities have so stated. Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, (8th Ed.) Vol. II, p. 1118, n. 1, in reference to the power of eminent domain, says:
“Property of individuals cannot be appropriated by the State under this power for the mere purpose of adding to the revenues of the State.”
Justice Wood, in Buckingham v. Smith, 10 Ohio 288, 297, speaking for the Supreme Court of Ohio on the subject of eminent domain, said this:
“The principle is founded on the superior claims of a whole community over an individual citizen; but then in those cases only where private property is wanted for public use, or demanded by the public welfare. We know of no instances in which *479it has, or can be taken, even by state authority, for the mere purpose of raising a revenue by resale, or otherwise, and the exercise of such a power would be utterly destructive of individual right, and break down all the distinctions between meum et tuum, and annihiliate them forever, at the pleasure of the state.”
And in our own jurisdiction, Judge Rodney’s opinion in Thomison v. Hillcrest Athletic Ass’n, 9 W.W.Harr. 590, 594, 5 A.2d 236, 238, so far as it goes, seems to be in harmony with these statements. He there said:
“While private property is liable to be taken for a public use the owner may refuse to part with the property if intended for a private use and so it is that neither the State itself nor any designated agency may take property as for a public use when in reality it is intended to again convey the property for a private use.”
It is obvious that both resales and leases could be profitable to the state, and both types of transaction are certainly conveyances to private use, so it seems clear that the mere prospect of a profit to the state has not heretofore been regarded as establishing that a particular use is public. It would be a fine distinction indeed to say that condemnation for resale, which is universally held improper, is bad, but that condemnation for leasing is allowable.
As to the federal authorities, the case of Kaukauna Water-Power Co. v. Green Bay & M. Canal Co., 142 U.S. 254, 12 S.Ct. 173, 35 L.Ed. 1004, while involving interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution, which is not here raised, nevertheless, turned upon the question of public use as against private use in a factual situation of alleged excessive taking, and it is, therefore, helpful.
The State of Wisconsin, in order to improve navigation, had taken over the bed, the banks, and the water of a river. The large dams required to assure navigability in the driest season afforded a huge head of potential power at other seasons, so Wisconsin undertook to lease this water power to manufacturers. Private power com-*480panics assailed all the power aspects of the scheme as an unwarranted invasion of their property rights. Under these facts, Mr. Justice Brown, speaking for the majority of the Supreme Court of the United States, said, 12 S.Ct. at pages 177-179, this:
“The improvement of the navigation of a river is a public purpose, and the sequestration or appropriation of land or other property, therefore, for such purpose, is doubtless a proper exercise of the authority of the state under its power of eminent domain. Upon the other hand, it is probably true that it is beyond the competency of the state to appropriate to itself the property of individuals for the sole purpose of creating a water-power to be leased for manufacturing purposes. This would be a case of taking the property of one man for the benefit of another, which is not a constitutional exercise of the right of eminent domain. But if, in the erection of a public dam for a recognized public purpose, there is necessarily produced a surplus of water, which may properly be used for manufacturing purposes, there is no sound reason why the state may not retain to itself the power of controlling or disposing of such water as an incident of its right to make such improvement. * * *
“The true distinction seems to be between cases where the dam is erected for the express or apparent purpose of obtaining a water-power to lease to private individuals, or where, in building a dam for a public improvement, a wholly unnecessary excess of water is created, and cases where the surplus is a mere incident to the public improvement, and a reasonable provision for securing an adequate supply of water at all times for such improvement. No claim is made in this case that the water-power was created for the purpose of selling or leasing it, or that the dam was erected to a greater height than was reasonably necessary to create a depth of water sufficient for the purposes of navigation at all seasons of the year.”
It may seem strange to us, in the light of modern developments, that the sale of water power even at that time could not have been *481justified on the facts as a public use, but if the case is left in its original setting, it affords a parallel to the problem before us. Our project is not one of those in which the construction of what the public welfare requires also happens incidentally to provide something which it would be wasteful not to use. Our scheme was frankly designed from the beginning to provide a large amount of excess space for private leasing. It is, therefore, as if the dams in the Kaukauna case had been planned to create “a wholly unnecessary excess of water” merely to be “leased to private individuals”.
It is true that in the Kaukauna case the enabling act had not ordered the authority to make the navigational improvements self-supporting, while the General Assembly has done so in respect to the project before us. Further, -it is said to be important that all the funds from the private business are assigned to the public service feature of this project.1 The contention is, therefore, advanced that although in the absence of this legislative action one phase of our project would be deemed a “private” enterprise, the device of a statutory union of the two phases is so efficacious that the improper purpose has been overcome by the proper one.
This attempted amalgamation of two projects of differing kinds so as to change the character of one of them seems to be a species of economic gerrymander. This must be just such a scheme as the Kaukauna opinion proscribed as a “colorable device” to earn revenue. Allocating the revenue to a specific public purpose, rather than running it through the general fund, seems to be little more than a glorified bookkeeping maneuver and can hardly obscure the fact that one entire phase of this project — itself requiring tax monies and eminent domain — is designed, in the above-quoted language of Cooley’s Constitutional Limitations, “for the mere purpose of adding to the revenues of the state”.
Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the limitations we are here concerned with are of constitutional character, so that the court can*482not permit them to be set aside or circumvented by a mere act of the legislature.
But it is argued that the economic ideas here expressed are no more than a relic of the past; that the constitution, on the other hand, is a “living” instrument; that, as proof of all this, we see about us on every side governments openly engaged in business of every description. We noticed that in the Kaukauna, case selling water power was talked of as if it were a peculiarly private matter, no more affected by the public interest than a refreshment stand. Yet today we see about us such giants of public fabric and finance as the Tennessee Valley Authority.
We see all these things, truly enough, but the point urged is not thereby established. It is one thing to say that the constitution is a living instrument, but quite another to say that it has neither essential form nor enduring principle. To the uncritical glance the swift evolution of economic and social ideas may appear to have wrought an overthrow of principle. This I do not concede. Time alters the definition of a public use. What is a luxury today is indispensable tomorrow, and that truth applies to people collectively as well as to individuals, but the principle that the government may not engage in private business except when and to the extent demanded by the public interest remains, I believe the governing consideration.
What has happened in the State of North Dakota is extreme enough to illustrate the point. A code of laws was passed several years ago authorizing that state to go into the business of grain processing and sale in all of its aspects — involving the building and operation of grain elevators, warehouses, mills, transportation facilities, and the like, the establishment of brokerage outlets and exchanges, and to top it off, the creation of a bank to handle the financial side of this enormous and extraordinary venture.
The constitutionality of these laws was tested in the courts, as the result of which the highest court of North Dakota affirmed findings that 90% of the income of the inhabitants of that state was derived from agriculture, that private capital had failed to provide sufficient *483facilities to furnish the people of that state a decent market for their products, and that, among other unfortunate consequences of this deficiency, the farmers of the state were losing upwards of $50,000,000 annually. Green v. Frazier, 44 N.D. 395, 176 N.W. 11.
When the case went to the Supreme Court of the United States, the ruling of the North Dakota courts was affirmed. 253 U.S. 233, 40 S.Ct. 499, 64 L.Ed. 878. From the opinion one gains the impression that the learned justices may have thought that North Dakota had gone a long way, but they recognized that under the peculiar economic conditions found to exist in North Dakota a case had been made out that there was a genuine public need for what was being done. It seems clear that elsewhere, and under different conditions, these same activities might have been branded as socialism.
But if what is here attempted can be done, what could the government not do ?
Chief Judge Lehman’s opinion in Bush Terminal v. City of New York, 282 N.Y. 306, 26 N.E.2d 269, describes the test between what is a proper activity and what is improper as a sort of relative, quantitative thing, a matter of “degree”. It holds that if, upon analysis (however that is to be accomplished), the proper purposes appear to be the “dominant” ones, the accompanying improper ones, being only “incidental”, are thereby validated; but if the improper ones are dominant, the whole scheme is vitiated. The optimum balance under this theory would presumably be achieved by starting with a genuinely public project and piling upon it as many private purposes as it could bear without forfeiting its classification as public.
But what qantities are to be measured in this type of test ?
If space is of the essence, the Wilmington Parking Authority has been conservative. Only 39% of the space of this project is to be allocated to private purposes. It would seem that more than 49% and less than 50% would have been possible. Yet in the Bush case space must not have been the vital thing, for 14 stories of a 16-story building were there devoted to commercial leasing.
*484Can income be the criterion? If so, the rule has here been violated, for 69.5% of the income of this project is to come from commercial leasing. In the Bush case it was 98%.
Cost? Apparently not, for here the cost of the space to be commercially leased involves 61.6% of the total.
Another suggestion seems to be that the “dominant” purpose is the one which primarily motivates the project, while what is not wanted, or not wanted very much, is only incidental. The settlement of vital rights of property by any such evanescent and wholly subjective test must surely be as dangerous as it would be unprecedented. Moreover, what motive is meant? Would it be the motive of the author of the bill, of each legislator who voted for the bill, or of a majority of the majority, or whose? Or does a law itself have a motive? If so, surely the test of that must be objective. Yet we have already canvassed in vain the only objective tests which have been suggested.
This quantitative rule for finding what is paramount and what is only incidental seems unsound and unworkable, no matter whether it is sought to measure space, or revenue, or cost, or motivating desire.
The reasoning of the Kaukauna case, on the other hand, puts forward a rule which seems sound. It holds that it is only such features of the project as are demanded by the needs of the public that the state has the affirmative right to establish. If in establishing those authorized ones other facilities are necessarily provided, the by-products, though not proper objects of public enterprise when standing alone, can in these circumstances nevertheless be turned into money. There is no requirement that waste be committéd as a sacrifice to legal theory. In this sense of the word “incidental,” the true test is whether what is turned into money after the manner of private enterprise has resulted “incidentally” from the construction or establishment of facilities for a proper public purpose. If so, it is within the governmental field; if not, it is an unwarranted invasion of the private domain.
We could apply this rule and obtain a result favorable to the Parking Authority if it presently needed space for only 800 cars but *485found it prudent now to build a building for the eventual accommodation of 1200 cars, or if they built for 800 and later learned that they had overestimated their requirements. But in our case there are no such facts. It is stipulated that 800 is the largest number of cars which it is feasible to route through the surrounding streets.
If this type of legislation should be generally sustained, I am at a loss to see how private enterprise could obtain any protection at all from government competition. If, as is here attempted, the cost of one or some of the functions which are admittedly proper for the government can simply be assigned to be paid out of commercial ventures having no relation to public functions except to support them, and if this can be made a “necessity” by having the legislature enact a law saying so, we may in time expect the familiar branches of the government service — the courts, the schools, the police, and the like— to be so supported. And if new public services may be voted simply by ordering the government to pay the attendant bills out of some manufacturing enterprise, chain of stores, or professional service, we may reasonably anticipate some very progressive experiments. The implications of the new powers here unloosed are limitless. Without first class management and operating economy, it might ultimately require the revenues of all private enterprise to run the government. And in the meantime it might prove difficult to put down any scheme, however harebrained, if it could be promoted under the pretense that it would cost the public nothing. In the end, of course, it would cost the public everything.
Two authorities other than the opinion of the majority of this court seem to say that the legislative device here involved is sustainable: Bush v. New York, supra, and Shizas v. City of Detroit, 333 Mich. 44, 52 N.W.2d 589.
I should hope to distinguish the Bush case on the ground that Chief Judge Lehman’s opinion did no more than to interpret the language of a statute defining the powers of the Port of New York Authority. He does not cite or expressly mention the constitution. But if the learned judge’s opinion is properly to be construed as a ruling on constitutional law, then I have no choice but to disagree with it.
*486As a matter of interest, the application of the rule favored in this opinion would not necessarily have changed the result of the Bush case. There were some facts there which were very different from those before us. A freight terminal for the eight railroads required a square block, facing on four streets. Thus the limits of the area to be condemned were fixed by the public need. And it might very reasonably have been found on competent evidence to be wasteful to build a two-story building in that location, among Manhattan’s tall buildings. In our case, on the other hand, it is obvious that more land is required for 800 cars to be parked in a four-story building, leaving 39% of all the floor space available for other uses, than would be required merely to provide for parking 800 cars in four stories.
While Shizas v. Detroit, supra, struck down the Michigan law as unconstitutional, it does contain some language supporting the inference that if Detroit had been unable to finance the parking project without the renting of stores, the court might have upheld the law. This hypothetical suggestion is, of course, pure dicta and may have stemmed from nothing more juridical than esteem for the eminent court which decided the Bush case.
I am, therefore, forced to the view that Chapter 5, Title 22, of the Delaware Code, as amended, is unconstitutional as purporting to authorize land to be condemned for, and tax monies to be invested in, a facility of which a considerable portion is to be devoted to purposes in which, under the circumstances shown, a government constitutionally wedded to capitalism may not engage. I believe that the City of Wilmington should simply be left to determine whether its need of a parking facility is sufficient to justify building and maintaining one in the ordinary way.
I should, therefore, answer the first, second, and fourth certified questions in the negative. The third one is so worded as not to invite a person of my convictions to answer it. Otherwise, I should have concurred in the majority opinion in respect to it. As to the fifth and sixth questions, the Chief Justice speaks for all members of the court.

. Ignoring the fact that 40 years from, now, when the bonds are all retired, the unencumbered physical property will represent clear profit.