Court Opinion

ID: 9769368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 14:48:09.076791+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:01.740244
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing
PER CURIAM.
In the motion for rehearing filed herein, our ruling that Sec. 523.100 is not applicable to the State Highway Commission is claimed to be erroneous. It is argued: “If 523.100 is inapplicable to the Highway Commission merely by reason of the presence in that Section of the words ‘railroad, telephone or telegraph company’, the same result would necessarily follow as to 523.010 and the entire condemnation procedure for the Highway Commission would collapse and the Highway Commission would have no authority to condemn at all.”
However, the Commission gets its authority from Sec. 227.120, which states in 12 separate subparagraphs the many pur*524poses for which it is authorized to condemn lands. Subparagraph 13 covers any other necessary purpose and states “the commission shall have the power to proceed to condemn such lands in the name of the state of Missouri, in accordance with the provisions of chapter 523, RSMo 1949, insofar as the same is applicable to the said state highway commission.” This last emphasized clause must be construed as making Sec. 523.100 inapplicable to the Commission because it would be in conflict with many of the purposes stated in Sec. 227.120. For example, according to Fire District’s contention, if a corporation owned a filling station on a highway which the Commission decided to widen, it could not condemn the station because (in the language of Sec. 523.100) that would “materially interfere with the uses to which, by law, the corporation holding the same is authorized to put said lands.” We think it is clear that the purpose of the above-quoted part of 227.-120(13) was to authorize the Commission to use the condemnation procedure provided by Chapter 523; and it also should be noted that Sec. 523.010 is not limited to a “railroad, telephone or telegraph company,” as is Sec. 523.100, but includes “other corporation created under the laws of this state for public use.”
Furthermore, as to taking lands held by “political subdivisions”, it is pertinent to show legislative intent to use, for state highways, property held for other governmental functions, that Sec. 227.130 authorizes them and other public agencies, holding title to real estate, “to give, grant and convey to or for the use of the state highway commission of Missouri such right of ways or other easements and appurtenances in said real estate or property as may be necessary for the proper and economical construction or maintenance of state highways.” Our ruling does not mean, as Fire District suggests, that there are no present limits on the authority of the Commission. For example, see Sec. 227.240 as to pipe lines, public utility lines, etc., construed in State ex rel. State Highway Commission v. Weinstein, Mo.Sup., 322 S.W.2d 778; see also Sec. 227.090. Another example is the Public Service Commission’s authority over crossing railroads. Sec. 389.640 discussed in State ex rel. State Highway Commission of Mo. v. Conrad, Mo.Sup., 310 S.W.2d 871.
As to Fire District’s contention that by our ruling “that the State Highway Commission is not a political subdivision of the State, but an ‘alter ego of the State’, such opinion contradicts prior decisions of the Supreme Court”, citing Public Water Supply District No. 2 of Jackson County v. State Highway Commission, Mo.Sup., 244 S.W.2d 4, 6, a divisional opinion, which did say the Commission was “a political subdivision of the state” but upheld its authority to require removal of the Water District’s installations. That statement therein, which made no difference in that decision, was incorrect because the Court en Banc, in State ex rel. McKinley Publishing Co. v. Hackmann, 314 Mo. 33, 282 S.W. 1007, 1010, had previously held the Commission was a subordinate branch of the state executive department; and this has been confirmed by Secs. 12, 29-34, Art. IV, 1945 Constitution, V.A.M.S. As to what is a political subdivision of the state, see Sec. 15, Art. X, Const.; Kansas City v. Neal, 122 Mo. 232, 234, 26 S.W. 695; Wilson v. King’s Lake Drainage & Levee District, 237 Mo. 39, 48, 139 S.W. 136; Stribling v. Jolley, 362 Mo. 995, 245 S.W.2d 885, 889. We further note again that Sec. 227.-120(13) states the Commission’s power is “to condemn such lands in the name of the state of Missouri.”
The motion for rehearing is overruled.