If a state statute as construed by the highest court of the
state is constitutional, this Court will follow that
construction.
There is nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment which prevents a
state in carrying out its declared public policy from requiring
individuals to make to each other, on due compensation, such
concessions as the public welfare demands, and the statute of Utah
providing that eminent domain may be exercised for railways and
other means to facilitate the working of mines is not
unconstitutional.
Clark v. Nash, 198 U.
S. 361, followed.
The facts are stated in the opinion.
Page 200 U. S. 529
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a proceeding begun by the defendant in error, a mining
corporation, to condemn a right of way for an aerial bucket line
across a placer mining claim of the plaintiffs in error. The mining
corporation owns mines high up in Bingham Canyon, in West Mountain
Mining District, Salt Lake County, Utah, and is using the line or
way to carry ores, etc., for itself and others from the mines, in
suspended buckets, down to the railway station, two miles distant,
and twelve hundred feet below. Before building the way, it made
diligent inquiry, but could not discover the owner of the placer
claim
Page 200 U. S. 530
in question, Strickley standing by without objecting or making
known his rights while the company put up its structure. The trial
court found the facts and made an order of condemnation. This order
recites that the mining company has paid into court the value of
the right of way, as found, and costs, describes the right of way
by metes and bounds, and specifies that the same is to be used for
the erection of certain towers to support the cables of the line,
with a right to drive along the way when necessary for repairs, the
mining company to move the towers as often as reasonably required
by the owners of the claim for using and working the said claim.
The foregoing final order was affirmed by the supreme court of the
state. 28 Utah 215. The case then was brought here.
The plaintiffs in error set up in their answer to the
condemnation proceedings that the right of way demanded is solely
for private use, and that the taking of their land for that purpose
is contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the
United States. The mining company, on the other hand, relies upon
the statutes of Utah, which provide that
"the right of eminent domain may be exercised in behalf of the
following public uses: . . . (6) Roads, railroads, tramways,
tunnels, ditches, flumes, pipes, and dumping places to facilitate
the milling, smelting, or other reduction of ores, or the working
of mines."
In view of the decision of the state court, we assume that the
condemnation was authorized by the state laws, subject only to the
question whether those laws, as construed, are consistent with the
Fourteenth Amendment. Some objections to this view were mentioned,
but they are not open. If the statutes are constitutional as
construed, we follow the construction of the state court. On the
other hand, there is no ground for the suggestion that the claim by
the plaintiffs in error of their rights under the Fourteenth
Amendment does not appear sufficiently on the record. The
suggestion was not pressed.
The single question, then, is the constitutionality of the
Page 200 U. S. 531
Utah statute, and the particular facts of the case are material
only as showing the length to which the statute is held to go.
There is nothing to add with regard to them unless it be the
finding that the taking of the strip across the placer claim is
necessary for the aerial line, and is consistent with the use of
all of the claim by the plaintiffs in error for mining, except to
the extent of the temporary interference over a limited space by
four towers, each about seven and one-half feet square and
removable, as stated above.
The question, thus narrowed, is pretty nearly answered by the
recent decision in
Clark v. Nash, 198 U.
S. 361. That case established the constitutionality of
the Utah statute so far as it permitted the condemnation of land
for the irrigation of other land belonging to a private person, in
pursuance of the declared policy of the state. In discussing what
constitutes a public use, it recognized the inadequacy of use by
the general public as a universal test. While emphasizing the great
caution necessary to be shown, it proved that there might be
exceptional times and places in which the very foundations of
public welfare could not be laid without requiring concessions from
individuals to each other upon due compensation, which, under other
circumstances, would be left wholly to voluntary consent. In such
unusual cases, there is nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment which
prevents a state from requiring such concessions. If the state
constitution restricts the legislature within narrower bounds, that
is a local affair, and must be left where the state court leaves it
in a case like the one at bar.
In the opinion of the Legislature and the Supreme Court of Utah,
the public welfare of that state demands that a rial lines between
the mines upon its mountain sides and the railways in the valleys
below should not be made impossible by the refusal of a private
owner to sell the right to cross his land. The Constitution of the
United States does not require us to say that they are wrong. If,
as seems to be assumed in the brief for the defendant in error, the
finding that the plaintiff
Page 200 U. S. 532
is a carrier for itself and others means that the line is
dedicated to carrying for whatever portion of the public may desire
to use it, the foundation of the argument on the other side
disappears.
Judgment affirmed.