Home/Supreme Court of Louisiana/Louisiana Ry. & Navigation Co. v. Knox

Louisiana Ry. & Navigation Co. v. Knox

51 So. 493, 125 La. 454, 1910 La. LEXIS 499
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedJanuary 31, 1910
DocketNo. 17,721
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 51 So. 493 (Louisiana Ry. & Navigation Co. v. Knox) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Louisiana Ry. & Navigation Co. v. Knox, 51 So. 493, 125 La. 454, 1910 La. LEXIS 499 (La. 1910).

Opinion

Statement of the Case.

MONROE, J.

This is an expropriation proceeding, in which the plaintiff has appealed, asking that the amount awarded be reduced, and the defendant has answered, asking for an additional allowance. The only questions presented are as to the value of the property and the fact and quantum of damages. Defendant owns a plantation of about 1,000 acres, situated some two miles above Baton Rouge and having a frontage of say a mile on the Mississippi river. At a distance varying from say 600 to 1,800 feet from [455]*455the river there is a bluff, and between the bluff and the river there is a batture, more or less wooded, subject to overflow in high water, and available, in ordinary stages of the river, for the purposes of pasturage, but not much used for the making of crops. The river, in front, has a depth of 40 feet or more (near the hank), and by reason of the configuration immecLiately above there is slack water, which makes the place a good harbor for flatboats, barges, and rafts, though it does not appear that defendant has hitherto derived any particular revenue from that source. The estate was, however, owned by his father, and whether for that reason, or because he believed that its advantages would, some time or another, he appreciated, he has held and paid the taxes on it for a period equaling that required for the passing of a generation. Considering the matter from a business point of view, his experience seems to verify the proverb that “all things come to those who wait”; for, whilst the plantation, when he acquired it, was so remote from the business centers of the country that few sensations reached it from those sources, it has, within the past few years, been connected with the outside world by railroads running to the four points of the compass, and has established, within its own boundaries, a city in embryo, with city lots, streets, sidewalks, and (it is to be hoped) proper sanitary regulations.

In 1905, the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad Company (one of the components of the Illinois Central System), having built a road running north and south, through the property, acquired the entire batture of the plantation below, which is separated from that of defendant by a tract some 800 feet in width, and established on the river bank the necessary facilities for the ferrying of cars to and from the trans-Mississippi territory. The Colorado Southern Railroad Company, coming from the west, reached the bank of the river at a point about opposite the lower end of defendant’s plantation, and there established similar facilities. And it is said in one of the briefs that each of the companies mentioned was to handle the traffic of the other, but that they disagreed (and the records of this court show that fact), with the result that the one has no landing on the one bank, and the other none on the other bank, and that the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Company is now waiting for the Southern Pacific to come to the west bank of the river, whilst the Colorado Southern, representing the Rock Island and Frisco Systems, is waiting for plaintiff to get to the bank upon this side. These last-mentioned facts, or theories, are not disclosed by the evidence in the record; but it is shown that the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Company acquired the batture (and some high land) and built the “incline” as stated. It is also shown that the Colorado Southern has come to the other side of the river, and there built an “incline.” It is further shown that plaintiff is the owner of a road, built by its predecessors (possibly three years ago), which runs north and south through defendant’s plantation, at a distance of say three-quarters of a mile to the eastward of that of the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Company, and that it now desires to acquire a certain strip, or irregular parcel, of land forming part of the plantation, in order to enable it to reach the river bank and there build an “incline” on this side of the river. Hence this suit.

Opinion.

The particular parcel which is sought to be expropriated is said to contain 49.7 acres and runs across the plantation, from plain tiff’s road (on the east) to the river (on the west), a distance of say a mile, and then turns northward and runs up the bank of the river for half a mile or more; our understanding of the delimitation of the parcel in question being attempted in the shaded figure “1, 2, 3” on the subjoined sketch, which [459]*459has been reduced (more or less inaccurately) from one of several plats offered in evidence.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
51 So. 493, 125 La. 454, 1910 La. LEXIS 499, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/louisiana-ry-navigation-co-v-knox-la-1910.