Alexandria Gazette

Please publish the following, from the Petersburg Intelligencer, on the powers times assumed by Corporations, and the liabilities, and oblige
A SUBSCRIBER.

Liabilities of Corporations—We observe in one of our exchanges that Dr. J. W. Paxton has recovered $2000 damages from the corporation of Knoxville, Tenn., for cutting down the streets around his house.

This case is suggestive of a few practical remarks upon the general subject of the liability of city corporations for injuries done to private property in grading or altering streets. We have had occasion to reflect a good deal upon the relationship between the owners of lots and the town or city government, particularly as it regards the action of the latter in the street department. We have examined somewhat carefully into adjudications of litigated cases arising from claims for damages on the part of individuals whose premises have sustained injury, either in the deep cuts necessary for reducing grades to a degree of inclination as near as possible to a level, or from embankments for elevating them. A case of this kind occurred in Pittsburg some years ago, under the following circumstances. The Catholics had erected a very handsome and costly Church upon one of the streets, and, of course, adapted to the then status of the street. Some time afterwards, we forget how long, the Corporation determined to lower the surface of the street in front of the Church several feet, which accordingly was done, much to the injury of that property. The suiters remonstrated in vain against the proceeding, and they had to submit. The street was cut down and paved. This was not all. it still subsequent period it was determined by the Corporation to reduce the grade of the street considerably lower. The Church authorities finding all efforts abortive to avert the additional injury with which they are visited, brought a suit against the Corporation for the recovery of damages, of the nature and extent of which some idea may be formed, from the fact that after this second grading was finished the church from base to pinnacle, which had once been level with the street now stands upon a precipice, nearly twenty feet above the pavement—thus in effect almost destroying the value of the property. The Court which finally decided the case gave judgment against the Church, but in expressing its opinion took special occasion to say in strong terms that the law under which it felt compelled to give this judgment, was in the last degree oppressive and unjust, and it went so far as to invoke the earliest attention of the Legislature with a view of repealing or rectifying it. Another similar case has occurred in the city of Washington, the details which we do not remember. but the Corporation triumphed over the plaintiff in the suit. Another has occurred in Richmond—between the old James River Company, and the owners of certain lots on the Northern margin of the basin in which the decision was adverse to the latter. In all these judicial tests the Corporation sued has obtained the verdict and this Knoxville case is the first we have seen in which damages have been allowed in a Court to the injured party. We are glad to see that the law does not everywhere allow a town or city corporation to inflict what amount of injury it pleases upon private property with impunity. It is high time, we think, that every code which sanctions such an invasion of the rights of persons by body-politic should be so amended as to protect the former from the grievous wrongs to which they are exposed. We are in favor of that general principle of law which subjects private property to public uses, when necessary, because it is based upon a principle equally valuable, viz: full compensation to the owner of the property from all losses or damage sustained by him in the premises. Why should a city corporation not be compelled to indemnify in like manner the owners of lots in all cases of damages by the grading of streets? Is it not an intolerable hardship for a citizen to have his grounds hacked to pieces; all the conveniences of his residence, it may be, utterly swept away and its value ever so much impaired by street edicts, without having any legal measure of relief or redress within his reach? Why should not the town be liable in toto for damages which it inflicts upon him? Why should a costly Church, as was the case in Pittsburg, be rendered almost worthless by two successive perpendicular cuts which leave it twenty feet above the pavement? But sometimes after a street is graded and paved and houses built up on the strength of these improvements, the corporation authorities may take it into their heads either to subject it to a yet lower grade, or to an elevation several feet. In this case, the owner of the houses and lots may be driven to the most enormous expense to conform them to the new grade in order to derive any profit from them—and even when he has incurred this heavy outlay, he knows not at what time a further alteration in the street may not subsequently subject him to a repetition of it upon a more aggravated scale. Corporations should not possess the power to violate individual rights—to touch or use private property for public purposes without making adequate compensation; and wherever this power exists it ought to be so modified by the Legislature as to conform to the plain and common dictates of justice and equity.