City of Boston v. Massachusetts Port Authority

320 F. Supp. 1317, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15000
CourtDistrict Court, D. Massachusetts
DecidedJanuary 19, 1971
DocketCiv. A. 70-1165
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 320 F. Supp. 1317 (City of Boston v. Massachusetts Port Authority) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Massachusetts primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
City of Boston v. Massachusetts Port Authority, 320 F. Supp. 1317, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15000 (D. Mass. 1971).

Opinion

OPINION

WYZANSKI, Chief Judge.

The City of Boston filed a complaint against the Massachusetts Port Authority, as owner and operator of Logan International Airport, and nineteen airlines that use it. Plaintiff’s claim is that defendants in violation of the fifth and fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution deprived it of its property by taking without just compensation an avigation easement over plaintiff’s land. Jurisdiction is alleged under the federal question statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1331 and the civil rights statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3) and (4).

The gist of the complaint may be stated summarily. Plaintiff owns land on which it has erected public schools. The Authority, created by Mass.St.1956, c. 465, § 2, owns and operates Logan International Airport. By leases, it granted defendant airlines terminal space and runway facilities, as well as ingress and egress rights. Planes owned by defendant airlines in approaching Logan fly over plaintiff’s property at low altitudes and at high speed, emitting loud noises, and generating waves of vibration in the atmosphere above and around plaintiff’s property. The low flights, the noises, and the vibrations limit the height of structures which may be built on plaintiff’s land, render the property unfit for educational purposes, and decrease the value of the property. These effects create a permanent servitude upon plaintiff’s property and are a form of confiscation and condemnation without just compensation. They also constitute an “invasion and nuisance without due process of law.” The relief sought is the payment of over $10 million damages.

Defendants move to dismiss the complaint because the court lacks jurisdiction over the subject matter of the complaint and because the complaint fails to state a cause of action.

While the complaint raises issues of wide public interest and concern, it does *1319 not state a federal cause of action within this court’s jurisdiction.

This court does not have jurisdiction of this ease under 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3) and (4) because the complaint seeks a remedy not for the deprivation of personal rights but for damage to plaintiff’s property. Eisen v. Eastman, 421 F.2d 560, 563-566 (2nd Cir.); National Land & Investment Co. v. Specter, 428 F.2d 91, 98, 100 (3rd Cir.).

While this court does have jurisdiction of this case under 28 U.S.C. § 1331 because it alleges an action which arises under the Constitution, the complaint does not indeed state a cause of action under the Constitution.

The complaint’s allegation that a cause of action under the fifth amendment is stated is unsound because that amendment applies only to a taking by the federal government, and not to actions by state agencies or private airlines, Fallbrook Irrigation Dist. v. Bradley, 164 U.S. 112, 158, 17 S.Ct. 56, 41 L.Ed. 369.

The complaint’s allegation that a cause of action under the fourteenth amendment is stated against the Port Authority is unsound because that amendment does not impose an obligation upon an instrumentality of a state, such as the Authority, to compensate another instrumentality of the same state, such as the City of Boston, for a taking authorized by that state. Hunter v. City of Pittsburgh, 207 U.S. 161, 178-179, 28 S.Ct. 40, 46, 52 L.Ed. 151; Risty v. Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry., 270 U.S. 378, 389, 390, 46 S.Ct. 236, 70 L.Ed. 641; Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 441, 59 S.Ct. 972, 83 L.Ed. 1385. The reason was stated in Hunter:

“Municipal corporations are political subdivisions of the state, created as convenient agencies for exercising such of the governmental powers of the state as may be entrusted to them. * * * The number, nature and duration of the powers conferred upon these corporations and the territory over which they shall be exercised rests in the absolute discretion of the state. * * * The state, therefore, at its pleasure may modify or withdraw all such powers, may take without compensation such property, hold it itself, or vest it in other agencies, expand or contract the territorial area, unite the whole or a part of it with another municipality, repeal the charter and destroy the corporation. All this may be done, conditionally or unconditionally, with or without the consent of the citizens, or even against their protest. In all these respects the state is supreme, and its legislative body, conforming its action to the state Constitution, may do as it .will, unrestrained by any provision of the Constitution of the United States.”

That principle applies in the case at bar. Plaintiff seeks compensation from the Authority for a “taking” alleged to be within the doctrine of Griggs v. County of Allegheny, 369 U.S. 84, 82 S.Ct. 531, 7 L.Ed.2d 585. The Griggs case held that when a person is deprived of the use of his property by planes flying in glide approaches to an airport constructed and operated by a state instrumentality, the persons’s property is “taken” (that is he is “deprived” of his property within the meaning of the fourteenth amendment) by the state instrumentality. The taking or deprivation, while effected by flights of airplanes, is attributable to the state instrumentality’s actions in creating and operating the airport.

In the case at bar there can be no doubt that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts itself created the Logan airport and thereafter authorized the Authority to operate it and to extend it. Construction of the airport was begun in 1922 under the authority of Mass.St.1922, c. 404. The Commonwealth’s Department of Public Works operated the airport beginning in 1941. Mass.Res.1941, c. 8; Mass.St.1941, c. 695. In 1948 operation of the airport passed to the Commissioner of Airport Management and the State Airport Management Board. Mass.St. 1948, c. 637. In 1956 the Common *1320 wealth created the Massachusetts Port Authority and gave it the power to operate and control Logan International Airport. Mass.St.1956, c. 465.

It is not alleged that either the Authority or its predecessors in operating Logan established the flight patterns of approach to the airport. Indeed this court takes judicial notice that such patterns have always been set by agencies of the federal government, see Griggs v. County of Allegheny, supra, and are now set by the Federal Aviation Administration under authority conferred by 49 U.S.C.

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Bluebook (online)
320 F. Supp. 1317, 1971 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15000, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/city-of-boston-v-massachusetts-port-authority-mad-1971.