Court Opinion

ID: 9418294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:19:22.791344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:43.119844
License: Public Domain

*596Mr. Justice Day,
dissenting.
I am unable to agree with the opinion of the court in this case. I think its importance justifies a brief statement of the grounds upon which my dissent rests.
In this case there was testimony tending to show that the plaintiffs’ property suffered a real and substantial damage by the erection and maintenance of the elevated railroad, and that their property right of ingress and egress was peculiarly and particularly injured by the railroad structure. Such damage was equivalent to a taking of property for a public usé and required just compensation to be made for the injury sustained. Washington Ice Co. v. Chicago, 147 Illinois, 327. There is no question of the real and substantial special injury to the plaintiffs’ property, shown by the testimony, and undoubtedly developed by the view of the premises which the jury had under the direction of the court. In this attitude of the case, the jury was instructed that the plaintiff could not recover; the court proceeding upon the theory that there was no testimony tending to show that plaintiffs’ property would not sell for as much after the construction of the road as before. The necessary effect of this instruction permitted the jury to consider appreciation in value arising from the general advantage of the structure, not only to the plaintiff, but to others of the public, similarly situated.
In the Supreme Court of Illinois this instruction was sustained upon the theory that the damages to the property might be offset by benefits .to the owner although such benefits were shared by all others similarly situated.
This court has more than once held that to take private property for public use without adequate compensation is a deprivation of due process of law within the meaning of’ the Fourteenth. Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy R. R. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226; Backus v. Fort Street Union Depot Co., 169 *597U. S. 557, 565. It has also held that just compensation, in the constitutional sense, excludes taking into account the supposed benefits that the owner may receive in common with the public from the use to which his property is appropriated. Monongahela Nav. Co. v. United States, 148 U. S. 312, 326.
Nor is it any answer to say that the proceedings in this case are in accordance with the laws of the State, in a proceeding in which the plaintiffs were allowed to appear and be heard, according to the rules of the local jurisdiction. This contention was made and met by this court in Chicago, B. & Q. R. R. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226, and this court has uniformly held that if the effect of the State’s judgment was to permit the taking of property without due process of law, the form by which that result is accomplished is of no moment, and the mere form of the proceeding, even if accompanied bv full opportunity to be heard, does not convert such process into due process of law, if the necessary result has been to deprive complainant of his property without just compensation, Chicago, B. & Q. R. R. v. Chicago, 166 U. S., p. 236, and the cases therein cited; Fayerweather v. Ritch, 195 U. S. 276, 297. If the effect of the judgment of the state court has been to take the property of the citizen without compensation, no matter what form the procedure has taken, it is violative of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. If this were not so, the State, by adopting forms of procedure and enforcing laws which operated to take private property without compensation, could deny the citizen the protection which, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to give against all forms of state action.
If the jury were permitted to pay the plaintiffs for their special damage in general benefits enjoyed by the public as well as the plaintiffs, the result is inevitable that the plaintiffs’ property was taken without compensation. In *598my view, the rule was correctly summarized by Justice Cartwright in his dissenting opinion in this case. In my opinion, he tersely and correctly stated the case in the following words:
• “In this case damage was claimed to property by the occupation of a public street with an elevated railroad. There were two classes of rights in the street; the one, the public right to use the street for travel and for that only; the other, the right of the property owner of ingress and egress, use in connection with his property and the appurtenant easements. If there was an obstruction to the públic use for travel by the iron pillars, there could be no recovery by the owner for consequent damage, but if his right of access was impeded or interfered with or his property rendered less valuable on account of noise, vibration or other natural consequence of the construction and maintenance of the road, the damage resulting was special' to that property. The thing would be a nuisance if there were no authority of law for its construction and operation, and whenever an act is done which without statutory authority would be a nuisance, the owner of property affected by it sustains a special and peculiar damage different from that sustained by the public in general and may have his action for damages resulting from his individual and distinct right. (Rigney v. City of Chicago, 102 Illinois, 64.) In this case there was a direct physical disturbance of a right enjoyed in connection with the ownership of property, and if there was any damage by reason of the disturbance of the right it was special. Against any such damage general benefits to the public, although enhancing the value of the property in question in common with other property in the vicinity could not be considered. To say that the only test is the market value of the property before and after the improvement, regardless of the causes affecting the value, necessarily charges the owner with benefits which this court has re*599peatedly held could not be done, and makes the owner contribute to a liquidation of special injuries his share of the general benefits derived from the construction and operation of the road.”
As the effect of the judgment below was to permit the plaintiffs to be paid for valuable property rights in general benefits, in my opinion it necessarily follows that plaintiffs’ property was taken without due process of law, and therefore in violation of the protection afforded by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Mr. Justice McKenna, Mr. Justice Lamab and Me. Justice Pitney concur in this dissent.