Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. Co. v. Minneapolis, 232 U.S. 430 (1914)
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Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul
Railway Company v. Minneapolis
No. 150
Argued December 19, 1913
Decided February 24, 1914
232 U.S. 430
ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT
OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA
Syllabus
Railroad corporations may be required, at their own expense, not only to abolish grade crossings, but also to build and maintain suitable bridges or viaducts to carry highways, newly laid out, over their tracks or to carry their tracks over such highways.
This rule has been declared as the established law of the State of Minnesota by its highest courts.
The same rule applies to a highway laid out to increase the advantages of a public park. Such a highway is a crossing devoted to the public use. Shoemaker v. United States, 147 U.S. 282.
The same rule also applies where the crossing is a canal or waterway connecting other waters, and although within a public park; the fact, and not the mode, of public passage controls.
The condemning of a strip of the right-of-way of a railroad company and compelling that company to build at its own expense a bridge over the part so taken so as to permit a municipality in Minnesota to construct a canal connecting two lakes all within the limits of a park devoted to public recreation is not an unconstitutional taking of private property without due process of law within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
115 Minn. 460 affirmed.
The facts, which involve the determination of whether the condemnation of a part of the right-of-way of a railroad company, and compelling it at its own expense, to construct a bridge over a waterway connecting two lakes within a park, amounts to a taking of property without compensation within the meaning of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, are stated in the opinion.