Mayor of Baltimore v. Baltimore Marine Works, Inc.

Sloan, J., delivered the opinion of the Oonrt. This is an appeal from a judgment in favor of the appellee for the alleged destruction of access to its property on account of the grading, paving and otherwise improving by the appellant of Clement, Stevenson, and Woodall streets, in Baltimore. The only exception is on a directed prayer of no legally sufficient evidence, offered by the appellant and refused by the trial court; but this one exception lays open all the facts testified to for the consideration of this Court, and particularly assumes the truth of the appellee’s evidence. The appellee’s claim is based upon its contention that, in the improvement of the three streets named, there has been such interference with the access to the appellee’s iron works on all of the streets as to amount to a taking under section 40 of article 3 of the Constitution, which is as follows: “The General Assembly shall enact no law authorizing private property to be taken for public use, without just compensation as agreed upon between the parties, or awarded by a jury, being first paid or tendered to the party entitled to just compensation.” “The section of the Constitution quoted does not define property, nor does it declare what shall be a taking.

It leaves those questions to the determination of the courts upon the facts of each particular case.” Baltimore v. Bregenzer, 125 Md. 83 . The law governing the case before ns is so well settled that it seems superfluous to burden 'this opinion with more than brief references to what has so frequently been declared. It is sufficient to refer to Dobler v. Baltimore, 151 Md. 154 ; Baltimore v. Dobler, 140 Md. 634 ; Cumberland v. Willison, 50 Md. 148 ; Green v. City and Suburban R. R. Co., 78 Md. 304 . In Baltimore v. Bregenzer, 125 Md. 87 , it was said: “In ³⁶⁹ none of tlie cases is it held that mere inconvenience of access resulting from acts done or mere diminution of light and air constitute a taking of private property.

The injury complained of must amount to a substantial destruction of those rights before the provisions of the Constitution can be invoked.” In Garrett v. Lake Roland R. Co., 79 Md. 282 , it was said: “In Transportation Co. v. Chicago, 99 U. S. 635 , the Court said: ‘Persons appointed or authorized by law to make or improve a highway are not responsible for consequential damages, if they act within their jurisdiction and with care and skill, is a doctrine almost universally accepted, alike in England and in this country.’ * * *” “The decisions to which we have referred were made in view of Magna Oharta and the restriction to be found in the constitution of every state, that private property shall not be taken for public use without just compensation being made. But acts done in the proper exercise of governmental power, and not directly encroaching upon private property, are universally held not to be a taking within the meaning of the constitutional provision,” and this was affirmed in Chicago v. Taylor, 125 U. S. 161 . “The constitutional right to compensation for private property taken for public use does not extend to instances where the land is not actually taken, but only indirectly or consequentially injured.” In this case it appears that the appellee had a lease on a lot in Baltimore, bounded on the north by Clement Street, on the west by Woodall Street and on the east by Stevenson Street, with a ten-foot alley extending over half way into the lot from Woodall Street. The appellee had erected on the lot a building in which it