Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. City of Chicago

CHICAGO, BURLINGTON AND QUINCY RAILROAD COMPANY v. CHICAGO.

Error to the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois.

No. 129. Argued November 6, 9, 1896 — Decided March 1, 1897.

Judgment affirmed. The case is stated in the opinion.

Mr. John J. Herrick for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company; Mr. J. W. Blythe was on his brief. Mr. E. E. Osborne for the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company, post, 258. Mr. John S. Miller for the city of Chicago; Mr. William G. Beale was on his brief.

Mr. Justice Harlan delivered the opinion of the court. Mr. Justice Brewer dissenting (post, p. 259).

The companion proceeding, No. 130, argued with No. 129, was affirmed for the reasons stated in this case (166 U.S. 258).

The report occupies pages 226 through 261 of volume 166 of the United States Reports. The opinion of the court ends at page 258; the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Brewer occupies pages 259 through 261.

[166 U.S. 226] “This court has authority to reexamine the final judgment of the highest court of a State, rendered in a proceeding to condemn private property for public use, in which after verdict a defendant assigned as a ground for new trial that the statute under which the case was instituted and the proceedings under it were in violation of the clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, forbidding a State to deprive any person of property without due process of law, and which ground of objection was repeated in the highest court of the State; provided the judgment of the court by its necessary operation was adverse to the claim of Federal right and could not rest upon any independent ground of local law.”

[166 U.S. 226] “The prohibitions of the Fourteenth Amendment refer to all the instrumentalities of the State, to its legislative, executive and judicial authorities, and, therefore, whoever by virtue of public position under a state government deprives another of any right protected by that amendment against deprivation by the State, violates the constitutional inhibition; and as he acts in the name and for the State, and is clothed with the State's power, his act is that of the State.”

[166 U.S. 226] “The contention that the defendant has been deprived of property without due process of law is not entirely met by the suggestion that he had due notice of the proceedings for condemnation, appeared, and was admitted to make defence. The judicial authorities of a State may keep within the letter of the statute prescribing forms of procedure in the courts and give the parties interested the fullest opportunity to be heard, and yet it might be that its action would be inconsistent with that amendment.”

[166 U.S. 226] “A judgment of a state court, even if authorized by statute, whereby private property is taken for public use, without compensation made or secured to the owner, is, upon principle and authority, wanting in the due process of law required by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.”

[166 U.S. 226] “The clause of the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution of the United States declaring that ‘no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law’ applies to cases coming to this court from the highest courts of the States in which facts have been found by a jury.”

[166 U.S. 226] “In a proceeding in a state court for the condemnation of private property for public use, the court having jurisdiction of the subject-matter and of the parties, the judgment ought not to be held in violation of the due [166 U.S. 227] process of law enjoined by the Fourteenth Amendment, unless some rule of law was prescribed for the jury that was in absolute disregard of the right to just compensation.”

[166 U.S. 227] “In a proceeding in a state court in Illinois to ascertain the compensation due to a railroad company arising from the opening of a street across its tracks — the land as such not being taken, and the railroad not being prevented from using it for its ordinary railroad purposes, and being interfered with only so far as the right to its exclusive enjoyment for purposes of railroad tracks was diminished in value by subjecting the land within the crossing to public use as a street — the measure of compensation is the amount of decrease in the value of its use for railroad purposes caused by its use for purposes of a street, the use for the purposes of a street being exercised jointly with the company for railroad purposes.”

[166 U.S. 227] “While the general rule is that compensation is to be estimated by reference to the uses for which the property is suitable, having regard to the existing business and wants of the community, or such as may be reasonably expected in the immediate future, mere possible or imaginary uses, or the speculative schemes of its proprietor, are to be excluded.”

[166 U.S. 227] “The railroad having laid its tracks within the limits of the city must be deemed to have done so subject to the condition — not, it is true, expressed, but necessarily implied — that new streets of the city might be opened and extended from time to time across its tracks as the public convenience required, and under such restrictions as might be prescribed by statute.”

[166 U.S. 227] “When a city seeks by condemnation proceedings to open a street across the tracks of a railroad within its corporate limits, it is not bound to obtain and pay for the fee in the land over which the street is opened, leaving untouched the right of the company to cross the street with its tracks, nor is it bound to pay the expenses that will be incurred by the railroad company in the way of constructing gates, placing flagmen, etc., caused by the opening of the street across its tracks.”

[166 U.S. 227] “All property, whether owned by private persons or by corporations, is held subject to the power of the State to regulate its use in such manner as not to unnecessarily endanger the lives and the personal safety of the people. The requirement that compensation be made for private property taken for public use imposes no restriction upon the inherent power of the State by reasonable regulations to protect the lives and secure the safety of the people.”

[166 U.S. 227] “The expenses that will be incurred by the railroad company in erecting gates, planking the crossing and maintaining flagmen, in order that its road may be safely operated — if all that should be required — necessarily result from the maintenance of a public highway, under legislative sanction, and must be deemed to have been taken by the company into account when it accepted the privileges and franchises granted by the State. Such expenses must be regarded as incidental to the exercise of the police powers of the State, and must be borne by the company.”

[166 U.S. 228] “The questions presented on this writ of error relate to the jurisdiction of this court to reexamine the final judgment of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and to certain rulings of the state court which, it is alleged, were in disregard of that part of the Fourteenth Amendment declaring that no State shall deprive any person of his property without due process of law, or deny the equal protection of the laws to any person within its jurisdiction.”

[166 U.S. 233] “It is, therefore, necessary to inquire at the outset whether ‘due process of law’ requires compensation to be made or secured to the owner of private property taken for public use, and also as to the circumstances under which the final judgment of the highest court of a State in a proceeding instituted to condemn such property for public use may be reviewed by this court.”

[166 U.S. 233] “But it must be observed that the prohibitions of the amendment refer to all the instrumentalities of the State, to its legislative, executive and judicial authorities, and, therefore, whoever by virtue of public position under a state government deprives another of any right protected by that [166 U.S. 234] amendment against deprivation by the State, ‘violates the constitutional inhibition; and as he acts in the name and for the State, and is clothed with the State's power, his act is that of the State.’ This must be so, or, as we have often said, the constitutional prohibition has no meaning, and ‘the State has clothed one of its agents with power to annul or evade it.’”

[166 U.S. 240] “In his work on Constitutional Limitations, Mr. Cooley says: ‘The principles, then, upon which the process is based are to determine whether it is “due process,” or not, and not any considerations of mere form. . . . When the government, through its established agencies, interferes with the title to one's property, or with his independent enjoyment of it, and its action is called in question as not in accordance with the law of the land, we are to test its validity by those principles of civil liberty and constitutional protection which have become established in our system of laws, and not generally by rules that pertain to forms of procedure merely. . . . In every government there is inherent authority to appropriate the property of the citizen for the necessities of the State, and constitutional provisions do not confer the power, though they generally surround it with safeguards to prevent abuse. The restraints are, that when specific property is taken, a pecuniary compensation, agreed upon or determined by judicial inquiry, must be paid.’”

[166 U.S. 241] “Due process of law requires, first, the legislative act authorizing the appropriation, pointing out how it may be made and how the compensation shall be assessed; and, second, that the parties or officers proceeding to make the appropriation shall keep within the authority conferred, and observe every regulation which the act makes for the protection or in the interest of the property owner, except as he may see fit voluntarily to waive them.”

[166 U.S. 241] “In our opinion, a judgment of a state court, even if it be authorized by statute, whereby private property is taken for the State or under its direction for public use, without compensation made or secured to the owner, is, upon principle and authority, wanting in the due process of law required by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, and the affirmance of such judgment by the highest court of the State is a denial by that State of a right secured to the owner by that instrument.”

[166 U.S. 241] “It remains to inquire whether the necessary effect of the proceedings in the court below was to appropriate to the public use any property right of the railroad company without compensation being made or secured to the owner.”

[166 U.S. 241] “Undoubtedly the verdict may not unreasonably be taken as meaning that, in the judgment of the jury, the company's property, proposed to be taken, was not materially damaged; that is, looking at the nature of the property and the purposes for which it was obtained and was being used, that which was taken from the company was not, in the judgment of the jury, of any substantial value in money. The owner of private property taken under the right of eminent domain obtains just compensation if he is awarded such sum as, under all the [166 U.S. 242] circumstances, is a fair and full equivalent for the thing taken from him by the public.”

[166 U.S. 242] “If the opening of the street across the railroad tracks did not unduly interfere with the company's use of the right of way for legitimate railroad purposes, then its compensation would be nominal. But whether there was such an interference, what was its extent, and what was the value of that lost by the company as the direct result of such interference, were questions of fact which the State committed to the jury under such instructions touching the law as were proper and necessary.”

[166 U.S. 255] “We concur in these views. The expenses that will be incurred by the railroad company in erecting gates, planking the crossing, and maintaining flagmen, in order that its road may be safely operated — if all that should be required — necessarily result from the maintenance of a public highway, under legislative sanction, and must be deemed to have been taken by the company into account when it accepted the privileges and franchises granted by the State. Such expenses must be regarded as incidental to the exercise of the police powers of the State.”

[166 U.S. 256] “What was obtained, and all that was obtained, by the condemnation proceedings for the public was the right to open a street across land within the crossing that was used, and was always likely to be used, for railroad tracks. While the city was bound to make compensation for that which was actually taken, it cannot be required to compensate the defendant for obeying lawful regulations enacted for the safety of the lives and property of the people. And the value to the railroad company of that which was taken from it is, as we have said, the difference between the value of the right to the exclusive use of the land in question for the purposes for which it was being used, and for which it was always likely to be used, and that value after the city acquired the privilege of participating in such use by the opening of a street across it, leaving the railroad tracks untouched. Upon that theory the case was considered by the jury, and the court did not err in placing it before them upon that basis as to compensation.”

[166 U.S. 258] “Compensation was awarded to the railroad company upon the basis of the value of the thing actually appropriated by the public — the use of the company's right of way for a street crossing, having regard to the purposes for which the land in question was acquired and held and was always likely to be held. In the case of individual owners, they were deprived of the entire use and enjoyment of their property, while the railroad company was left in the possession and use of its property for the purposes for which it was being used and for which it was best adapted, subject only to the right of the public to have a street across it. In this there was no denial of the equal protection of the laws, unless it be that the public cannot have a street across the tracks of a railroad company, except upon the condition precedent that it shall condemn and acquire the absolute ownership of the land, leaving untouched the right of the company to cross it with its tracks. We do not think the equal protection of the laws imposes such a burden upon the people of a city within the limits of which a railroad company has been permitted to lay its tracks.”

[166 U.S. 258] “We have examined all the questions of law arising on the record of which this court may take cognizance, and which, in our opinion, are of sufficient importance to require notice at our hands, and finding no error, the judgment is Affirmed.”

[166 U.S. 259] “I dissent from the judgments in these cases. I approve that which is said in the first part of the opinion as to the potency of the Fourteenth Amendment to restrain action by a State through either its legislative, executive or judicial departments, which deprives a party of his property without due compensation; also the ruling that ‘due process’ is not always satisfied by the mere form of the proceeding, the fact of notice and a right to be heard. I agree to the proposition that ‘a judgment of a state court, even if it be authorized by statute, whereby private property is taken for the State, or under its direction, for public use, without compensation made or secured to the owner, is, upon principle and authority, wanting in the due process of law required by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and the affirmance of such judgment by the highest court of the State is a denial by that State of a right secured to the owner by that instrument.’”

[166 U.S. 259] “It is disappointing after reading so strong a declaration of the protecting reach of the Fourteenth Amendment and the power and duty of this court in enforcing it as against action by a State by any of its officers and agencies, to find sustained a judgment, depriving a party — even though a railroad corporation — of valuable property without any, or, at least, only nominal, compensation. . . . The abundant promises of the fore part of the opinion vanish into nothing when the conclusion is reached. They amount to a mere brutum fulmen.”

[166 U.S. 259] “The railroad company, which owns a tract of land within the limits of the city of Chicago, holds [166 U.S. 260] it by deed from the original proprietors, having, therefore, the highest and best of all titles, a fee simple, and by virtue thereof a right to its exclusive use, with all the benefits and profits which attend thereon, is deprived of such exclusive use, forced to admit everybody to an equal use and occupation . . . and receives for this only one dollar — merely nominal compensation.”

Editorial note. This record is a research edition, not a substitute for the official reporter. It reproduces the Reporter of Decisions apparatus in full and reproduces the court's own text in extended verbatim passages arranged in the court's own order of analysis, each bracketed with the official United States Reports page on which the passage appears. Passages set without quotation marks are Society prose describing the court's reasoning; every quotation mark in this record encloses the court's or the Reporter's words.

Editorial note. The Court-authored sections of this record are SELECTED EXCERPTS, not complete opinions. Each such section is headed accordingly, and no section of this record represents a judicial opinion as reproduced in full. Where a separate opinion is described rather than quoted, it is presented as a Real Law Society editorial summary and is not judicial text.

Editorial note. Four limitations are declared. First, the opinion of 1897 has no numbered internal divisions and no numbered footnotes; the divisions used in this edition are Society headings describing the court's successive subjects, not divisions of the court. Second, the extended review of the Illinois record and of the state and federal authorities at pages 228 through 240 and 242 through 254 is summarised rather than quoted at length. Third, the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Brewer, printed at pages 259 through 261 with the companion proceeding No. 130, is quoted in part only. Fourth, obvious typographic and scanning defects in the digitised bound volume (for example “regxamine” for “reexamine” and “coinpensation” for “compensation”) have been silently corrected against the surrounding text; no substantive word has been altered, modernised, or paraphrased inside a quotation.

Editorial note. One point of identity should be noted. The bound volume styles the case Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Company v. Chicago. The Society's citation retains the form long established in the treatise and in the certified Table of Cases, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. v. City of Chicago, so that existing cross-references resolve; the official style is recorded here for the researcher's benefit. For any purpose requiring the complete official text, consult the bound volume through the canonical source recorded with this authority.

Editorial note. The City of Chicago instituted condemnation proceedings to open a street across the right of way and tracks of the railroad company. The jury assessed the company's compensation for the land taken at one dollar, on the view that the company retained the use of its right of way subject only to the crossing and sustained no substantial pecuniary loss; the expense of planking, gates, and flagmen was treated as an incident of the railroad's obligation to the public rather than as compensable taking. The company assigned as error that the proceeding deprived it of property without due process of law.

Editorial note. The condemnation proceeding was tried to a jury in the state court, which entered judgment on the verdict; the Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed. The company brought error to this Court, which affirmed. The companion proceeding, No. 130, argued with No. 129, was affirmed on the same reasoning at page 258.

Editorial note. The issue was whether this Court may re-examine a state condemnation judgment on the ground that no just compensation was made, and whether the award satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held that it has that authority: a judgment of a state court taking private property for public use without compensation deprives the owner of property without due process of law, and the Fourteenth Amendment therefore imports the substance of the just-compensation requirement into the restraints on state power. Applying that standard, the Court found no federal error in the award. The rule that follows is that just compensation is a constitutional condition on state as well as federal expropriation, and the adequacy of compensation is a federal question.

Editorial note. Justice Harlan reasoned that due process of law protects the substance of the right of property, and that a State cannot, consistently with that guarantee, appropriate private property to public use and leave the owner uncompensated — whatever forms of procedure it observes. The prohibitions of the Amendment bind every instrumentality of the State, judicial as well as legislative and executive.

Editorial note. On the merits, the Court accepted the state courts' determination of what had actually been taken: the railroad retained its right of way and continued to operate its tracks, and the burdens of maintaining a safe crossing arose from duties the company already owed the public. The measure of compensation was the diminution in the value of the exclusive railroad use caused by the joint public use. Compensation measured against the interest actually appropriated was therefore not constitutionally deficient, and the Court held that a state judgment should not be disturbed unless a rule of law was prescribed to the jury in absolute disregard of the right to just compensation.

Editorial note. This decision is the historical bridge between the federal Takings Clause and state eminent-domain practice, and it is treated in the treatise as the point at which just compensation became a nationally enforceable limit on the taking of land. It also illustrates a durable analytical discipline: the constitutional question is first what interest the State appropriated, and only then what that interest is worth. Justice Brewer's dissent states the enduring objection that a nominal award may hollow out the guarantee the Court had just announced.

Editorial note. Followed. The principle that the just-compensation requirement restrains the States is assumed in the modern takings cases, including Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922), and Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978). Later decisions on the mechanics of state-court takings litigation, notably Knick v. Township of Scott, 588 U.S. 180 (2019), rest on the same premise without disturbing this holding.

Editorial note. Read with U.S. Const. amend. V (Takings Clause) and U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1.