3 Mo. App. 464 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1877
delivered the opinion of the court.
The St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern Railway Company proceeded, under the provisions of article 5 of the General Statutes, concerning corporations (Wag. Stat. 326), to condemn part of the lot of one Patrick Carroll, in the city of St. Louis, for the laying of its track thereon. Commissioners were appointed, who made their report in due form, awarding to Carroll the sum of $558 for his damages. The company thereupon paid this amount to the clerk of the Circuit Court, and Carroll filed his exceptions to the commissioners’ report. The defendants, one of whom was an attorney of the corporation and the other an employee in a different capacity, went with a corps of laborers to the
Upon trial of the cause before the court, without a jury, the acts of the parties on Carroll’s premises were proved substantially as above stated. The defendants offered in evidence the record of the condemnation proceedings, but this, upon objection made by the State, was excluded. The court dismissed the information as to all the other defendants, and assessed a fine of $25 against defendant Dickson, and a fine of $10 against defendant Burlingame.
We have no clue to the theory upon which the court rejected the testimony offered by defendants and found them guilty of a criminal offense. No brief is filed in behalf of the State, nor does the record give us any information of the grounds which were found sufficient to sustain the court’s conclusions. The record of the proceedings in condemnation appears to be without a flaw. The amount of money assessed for damages was duly paid to the clerk, and the statutory justification of the defendants’ action thereupon is so plainly expressed that interpretation would be a waste of words.
Did the defendants directly or indirectly take or keep
If these words mean anything, the performance by defendants of a plain duty to their employers and to the public was declared by a court of justice to have been criminal and punishable ; but for no apparent reason, unless that the duty was performed in the face of a ruffianly and law-breaking attempt at intimidation.
The rights of private property are as sacred as any that the law protects in the citizen. But the right of eminent domain, constitutionally exercised, is above them all. Private property and its enjoyment exist by the law’s sanction ■only. To this sanction pertains an inseparable condition, in the rightful power of appropriation for the public good. The real criminal is he who, in assuming the sanction, will yet trample on the condition.
The land of Carroll had been completely appropriated to the public use, in the manner prescribed by law. The servants and employees of the corporation were delegated by the sovereign authority to make that use available for the
No execution is provided for by law in such cases. Was. it ever supposed that, in order to make a condemnation effectual, an action of ejectment must next be maintained by the corporation, so that a writ of possession may be placed in the hands of the sheriff ? The law gave to these defendants, representing their company, an absolute right of entry. It seems monstrous to assume that by exercising this, right — which was also a duty — in the only manner possible for its exercise, they could incur the vengeance of the same law which had created it for them.
The judgment of the court below must be reversed. The testimony rejected, but preserved by the record, presents.