Court Opinion

ID: 9726680
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:03:31.904281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:29.719636
License: Public Domain

VOGEL, Justice
(dissenting).
I fully agree with the dissent of Justice Sand, and add a few remarks of my own.
The benefits to North Dakota claimed in the majority opinion (and admitted to be insufficient individually to constitute public benefits) can be divided into three categories: first, the “probability that Minnkota customers will receive direct and substantial power after 1985,” as to which I agree with Justice Sand and the trial court that a mere option exercisable in eight or more years by a board the majority of whom are nonresidents of this State is an insufficient basis for the granting of the quasi-governmental power of eminent domain to a corporate shell; second, the claimed stabilizing effect of the DC line on the AC system in North Dakota; and, third, the “incidental benefits” such as assumed lower costs in the distant future due to cheaper construction at present-day costs, and emergency backup potential.
The “incidental benefits” can be dismissed as irrelevant to the problem before us, which is whether the public benefits justify the use of eminent domain. The “incidental benefits” are equally applicable to all plant and transmission line construction anywhere, since all lines are interconnected with others, so the construction of any line anywhere adds backup potential to all lines to which it is interconnected. Such potential, standing alone, is no reason for allowing the use of eminent domain. If the mere addition of generating capacity anywhere were enough to justify the use of *539eminent domain, judicial review would be meaningless.
The one benefit that comes closest to being a public benefit justifying the use of eminent domain is the claimed stabilizing effect of the DC lines on the system in North Dakota. It appears that there will be some benefit from the damping effect of the DC line on oscillations on heavily loaded AC transmission lines over long distances. Such a benefit, while important, will apparently be less important when AC lines are less fully loaded than at present. The trial court concluded that this one benefit was insufficient to justify the use of the power of eminent domain to acquire 200 miles of right-of-way, and I believe the court’s finding, treated with the deference it deserves, is not clearly erroneous or an abuse of discretion.
I believe some comment on the special concurrence is called for. Like the majority opinion, most of it is unexceptionable discussion, but it goes astray at the end. I specifically disagree with several statements in it. As Justice Sand points out, it is incorrect to say that the burden is on the landowner to prove that the taking is not for a public use. While it is true that “There is no law supporting the conclusion that indirect benefits do not support public use” in this State, both the majority and dissenting opinions contain citations to cases in other jurisdictions which state the general rule that indirect benefits do not support public use. Such cases include Gralapp v. Mississippi Power Co., 280 Ala. 368, 194 So.2d 527 (1967); Adams v. Greenwich Water Co., 138 Conn. 205, 83 A.2d 177 (1951); and Grover Irrigation and Line Co. v. Loveila Ditch R. & Irrigation Co., 21 Wyo. 204,131 P. 43 (1913). The only reason we have no decision is that the question has not arisen in this State before.
It is unfair to criticize the conclusion of law of the trial court that “Square Butte will not supply electrical power to the citizens of North Dakota.” That statement is literally true. Square Butte will in the immediate future sell electricity to Minnesota Power and Light Company, which faces a huge increase in demand from the taconite industry in Minnesota, soon to come. Square Butte may in the indefinite future (starting in 1985, at the earliest) sell power to Minnkota, which has customers in North Dakota. But Square Butte itself is, if anything more than a shell, a manufacturer and wholesaler of electricity, and not a supplier to individual citizens.
Citations to Berman v. Parker, 348 U.S. 26, 75 S.Ct. 98, 99 L.Ed. 27 (1954), and Housing and Redevelop. Auth. v. Minneapolis Met. Co., 259 Minn. 1, 104 N.W.2d 864 (1960), lose their relevancy when the facts of those cases are kept in mind. Both cases involved urban renewal programs, in both cases there had been legislative or Congressional determinations of the need for urban renewal of the general area, and public agencies had been given authority to designate the specific areas to be renewed and to develop plans for doing so. Both involved the exercise of the police power to eliminate slum conditions. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that the use of eminent domain was upheld. But the factual differences between those cases and ours show how little help the decisions are to us, faced as we are with entirely different facts, especially a total absence of governmental participation or specific authorization.
I suggest that this case represents a fair test of the outer limits to which private use of eminent domain can be extended, and that the majority allows an almost limitless use. We have here a cooperative, organized by a private utility and a generating cooperative, for reasons of their own. It has but one employee. Since it was incorporated under generous statutes which give it the power of eminent domain, it asserts that it can use that power to acquire land for transmission lines even though not one watt of the power can be used in the State whose power of eminent domain is being used for at least eight years, with subsequent use dependent upon the exercise of options by a board of twelve, eight of whom are nonresidents of that State.
If corporate powers of eminent domain extend to this case, as the majority says *540they do, I find it difficult to conceive of a situation to which they would not extend.
Under our laws, as I view them, Square Butte is welcome to acquire right-of-way by purchase, but not by eminent domain. The claimed public benefits are so illusory, so metaphysical, and so chimerical that they cannot, individually or collectively, justify the use of the quasi-governmental power of eminent domain.
I am authorized to state that Justice SAND joins in the foregoing dissent.