Court Opinion

ID: 9807603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:10:55.598721+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:47:56.868932
License: Public Domain

Douglas, J.,
dissenting.
I can not concur in the opinion of the Count upon any principle of settled law or public policy. I readily agree that if a person lays out a tract of land into lots and streets and sells lots upon the faith of the plat', he can not close up any of the streets if it works a substantial injury to such a purchaser. But the opinion of the Court does not stop here. It lays down the broad doctrine that if the owner of land divides it into lots and streets on paper and sells a single lot by tbe foot, be dan never close a single street, even if it has never bean opened, is never used by the purchaser of the lot, and does not affect in any way the value of his property. In other words, if a man owning two or three thousand acres of land, in a moment of public craze, such as we have recently had, makes a plat of it showing a hundred streets that have never had, and never will have, any actual or potential existence outside of the fertile imagination of a land-boomer, and sells a single quarter acre lot to a man to whom he happened to show the plat, he can never close a single one of the hundred paper streets, it makes no difference that the lot sold is on the extreme corner of the plat and is *568not affected in value in the slightest degree by the opening or closing of back streets miles away from it; and that its purchaser has no use for the streets which can. never be used by him or 'anyone else for any practical purpose. In spite of these facts, all these hundred streets must be kept open forever, not toi subserve Iris convenience, for .they add nothing to that, but simply to gratify his whim or to enable him to force the vendor to- buy his peace at any price he may ask. It is said' there is a legal presumption, of injury, but in this I can not concur in the face of adverse facts.
The boomer may fail, as. he usually does, and some innocent purchaser may buy the land under mortgage or execution siale. What right would he acquire ? Suppose he should build a. large factory and inadvertently locate it in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue or Broadway, whose existence neither he nor anyone else had suspected — could the purchaser of that solitary lot compel him to tear down his building? It may be said that this is reductio ad dbsurdum. Even so, it is a result, tha-t may follow from the opinion of the Court. We know that during the recent boom, thousands of acres of old fields were platted into lote and streets which, by the inexorable logic of events, have long since been turned back into' old fields. I know one tract of about a thousand acres, the quiet-enjoyment of which miay be seriously endangered by the opinion of the Court. We know that it may result in great hardship. If it does no good, then why risk the danger of so much harm ? I readily admit that the purchaser is entitled to the use of all such streets as are necessary to the reasonable enjoyment óf the lot he has purchased ; and I do not. think that, anything more was ever contemplated by either party to. the contract.
It may be that the opinion of the Court is. not intended to go as far as I apprehend; but if so, it should be made ’to sav so-. If we do not place the line of olemarkation at the point *569where the purchaser ceases to suffer any substantial injury, where will we stop ?
This opinion is founded upon the case of Conrad v. Land Co., 126 N. C., 776, and yet it goes far beyond it. In Conrad’s case the opinion states that: “Afterwards, the plaintiffs each purchased from the defendant company one of the lots so laid off, lying along the Southern edge of Fourth Street as it ran along Grace Court.” That is, I supnose, that the lots purchased were opposite to Grace Court on the same street. Again, thajt opinion says: “This action was brought for a perpetual injunction restraining the defendant. Hotel and Land Co., from disposing of the court or any part thereof for private purposes, or from otherwise depriving the plaintiffs of their enjoyment of the court as a public open ground, and from narrowing or closing up the streets surrounding the same.” Surely, that does not support the opinion in the case at bar, nor do the cases cited in Conrad’s case. In Meier v. Railway, 16 Oregon, 500, the plaintiff was seeking to recover a street along which a street dar line was in actual operation. Then certainly some one would have been damaged. In Grogan v. Haywood, 4 Fed. Rep., 164, the plaintiff was suing the town, also seeking to recover a street apparently in common use. In Church v. Portland, 6 L. R. A., 259 (erroneously cited as 659), the plaintiff wlas seeking to prevent Hie erection of a public building in a public square.
In Price v. Inhabitants of Plainfield, 40 N. J. L., 608, the bone of contention was a public square.
In State v. Fisher, 117 N. C., 733, this Court thus lays down the rule, on page 740: “When the defendant opened up the street,then outside of the confines of the city of Greensboro, if * * * he had sold a single one of the lots abutting on this apparent extension of North Elm Street, he and tiróse claiming under him would have been estopped from denying the right of such purchaser and those in privity with him to *570use the street, as laid down in the plat, and called for as his boundary line in the deed conveying it to him.” There is no suggestion that ‘the purchaser would have been entitled to the use of any other street laid out by Eisher.
I regret that the extreme pressure of work incident to the closing days of the term prevents me from giving this case the attention it deserves, or the research necessary to properly present it. I will cite but one case — Pearson v. Allen, 151 Mass., 79, also cited by the Court.
But suppose that the plaintiff should have some theoretical right to the use of streets that he never eixpeets to use, how can he enforce it ? This infringement would be injuria sine damno, which the law will not seek to redress. It is well settled that all such implied dedications' operate by way of estoppel in pais, and it seems equally well settled that there can be no estoppel where there is no actual injury. Neither is he entitled to injunction, for equity will grant an injunction only to prevent irreparable injury that can not be compensated in damages.
In what I have said, I have not referred so much to the facts of the case as to the scope of the opinion, from which I must respectfully dissent.