Alford v. Illinois Cent. R.

86 F. Supp. 424, 1949 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2222
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Louisiana
DecidedSeptember 24, 1949
DocketCiv. A. No. 2271
StatusPublished

This text of 86 F. Supp. 424 (Alford v. Illinois Cent. R.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Alford v. Illinois Cent. R., 86 F. Supp. 424, 1949 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2222 (W.D. La. 1949).

Opinion

PORTERIE, District Judge.

Plaintiffs, over 150 in number, complain that defendant is maintaining a nuisance at its coaling station or so-called roundhouse in Bossier City, Louisiana, with resultant damage to their respective properties and “inconvenience, discomfort and annoyance to them personally.”

The complaint charges that defendant, in refueling or firing its locomotives at Bossier City, negligently creates and sends into the atmosphere dense and obnoxious smoke, with accompanying gases, soot, and cinders, which settles on and infiltrates plaintiffs’ homes, damages the paint, screens and wallpaper of their homes, and subjects them to personal discomfort.

There is no allegation that defendant’s roundhouse facilities were improperly or negligently located in that they were placed in such close proximity to the homes in this popular residential area as to constitute by reason of such location or placement a nuisance. At least two-thirds of the houses in this area of Bossier City have been built since the defendant moved the roundhouse facilities of its predecessor, in 1933, from Cotton and McNeil Streets in the City of [426]*426Shreveport to a ten-acre tract it owned in’ Bossier City. The ten-acre tract was" not' then nor is it now -located in close proximity, to residences,since it is separated-by a wide public highway from the homes in this area.,

The defendant was not compelled to move, these facilities from Shreveport to the ten-acre .tract because defendant continually polluted the air with coal smoke; nor were the facilities moved as a result of the -holding in Tucker v. Vicksburg, S. & P. R. Co., 1910, 125 La. 689, 51 So. 689; but they were moved only because the Shreveport facilities were inadequate (a larger area was needed for the mechanical operations of the company), and in order to do away with uneconomical arrangements under which locomotives were moved from Shreveport, where there was no turntable, to the turntable at Bossier City, there turned, and then moved back to Shreveport.

This complaint of nuisance against defendant and its predecessors is of long standing and of repeated assertion in the courts. It was first given judicial review in the case of Tucker v. Vicksburg, S. & P. R. Co., 1910, 125 La. 689, 51 So. 689. The railroad company then moved its roundhouse, because of crowded conditions, from the City of Shreveport proper, across the Red River, to Bossier City — locating on the outskirts of the then existing Bossier City.

The next assertion — and it is one of immediate relation to the instant case 'because the same situs is involved — was in the case of McGee v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co., 1944, 206 La. 121, 19 So.2d 21. Then, the next and last assertion was in the case of Devoke v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co., 1947, 211 La. 729, 30 So.2d 816. Finally, we have the instant case filed on September 6, 1947, in the state court, but removed to this court by the defendant because of diversity of citizenship and of -the amount in controversy.

The Louisiana law, -as given by our state supreme court in the above cases, Is the law applicable. Whether or not the defendant is neglectful is not the deciding point; the real issue is whether or not the plaintiffs’suffer unreasonably from the nuisance. The nuisance, of course, must be caused by the defendant; “and what the defendant does, however conscientiously done and however much it costs, is irrelevant”. Plaintiff’s brief. However> ’in the case that the source, or sources, of a nuisance be in doubt, or- at issue, the want of negligence of a defendant is admissible circumstantial evidence in -a defendant’s favor.

As a matter of law, we do not admit that, because the state court in the Devoke case found that defendant’s facilities, as they were operated in 1945, constituted a nuisance; this court must likewise find that the operation of these facilities constituted a nuisance in 1948 o-r 1949. Since the parties are not ¡the same, the witnesses are not the same, the period of time in which it is claimed a nuisance existed is not the same and the factual situation is not 'the same, and, particularly, since improved devices have been added for the suppression of smoke by the railroad company, since -the Devoke case, and additionally, because there has been much more diligence and cooperation by all the laborers, the foremen, and executives of -the defendant company, we are free in our interpretation of the facts in the instant case. We -are not bound to consider the thing as being adjudged. La. Civil Code, Art. 2286.

Our decision in this case is that from December 1, 1948, on, there is actually no nuisance of any kind. We arrive at that conclusion from the facts. We are not arriving at this conclusion because the improvements by the defendant are well-nigh perfect; improvements will not insulate against liability, if the plaintiffs suffer in spite of them. Snow v. Marion Realty Co., 212 Cal. 622, 299 P. 720.

Our decision is not influenced by the fact that quite a number of plaintiffs became owners of the property after the alleged nuisance existed for a number of years, or that, even knowing it was so affected, they still persisted in buying property in the area. McGee v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co., 1944, 206 La. 121, 19 So.2d 21; Tucker v. Vicksburg, S. & P. R. Co., 1910, 125 La. 689, 51 So. 689.

The right of habitation is superior to the right of industry or trade. American Smelting & Refining Co. v. Godfrey, 8 Cir., 1907, 158 F. 225, 14 Ann.Cas. 8. “If [427]*427population, where there was none before, approaches a nuisance, it is the duty of those liable at once to put an end to it. Brady v. Weeks, 3 Barb., N.Y., 157.” Northwestern Fertilizing Co. v. Hyde Park, 1878, 97 U.S. 659, 24 L.Ed. 1036.

The defendant’s claim that the plaintiffs are barred by the prescription of one year is overruled. See Devoke v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co., 211 La. 729, 30 So. 2d 816, 822, and cases cited there.

We appreciate the minor weakness of this ruling: The nuisance is not distinctly “a continuous one of daily occurrence” (Devoke case, supra) because the full discomfort and inconvenience occurred only on the day or days that the wind blew over the area affected from the direction of defendant’s plant — roundhouse and switching facilities. Because the plaintiff did suffer from the presence of soot and cinders in between the times that the winds would blow from the direction of the nuisance, we are impelled to overlook this noted weakness.

In this case the court must charge itself, among other things, that, as a jury would, it must determine whether or not the credibility of the witnesses employed by the defendant, laborers or executives, is influenced by the fact of their employment. We must say no threat of dismissal hangs over the heads of the laborers for, being unionized, they are free. We have discerned, however, quite an attachment in all those employed for the defendant company. This might affect their testimony.

The court must charge itself too, that the plaintiffs have a great monetary interest in the result of this case; whether or not they are moved by that consideration is an important point.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Fertilizing Co. v. Hyde Park
97 U.S. 659 (Supreme Court, 1878)
Snow v. Marian Realty Co.
299 P. 720 (California Supreme Court, 1931)
Devoke v. Yazoo M. v. R. Co.
30 So. 2d 816 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1947)
McGee v. Yazoo M. v. R. Co.
19 So. 2d 21 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1944)
Tucker v. Vicksburg, S. & P. Ry. Co.
51 So. 689 (Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1910)
American Smelting & Refining Co. v. Godfrey
158 F. 225 (Eighth Circuit, 1907)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
86 F. Supp. 424, 1949 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 2222, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/alford-v-illinois-cent-r-lawd-1949.