RAILWAY COMPANY
v.
RENWICK
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A railroad company sought to use its state-granted power of eminent domain to appropriate a riparian owner's improvements along the Mississippi River without compensation, claiming the improvements violated federal commerce regulations. The Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's decision that the railroad must compensate the riparian proprietor for his property, holding that improvements made by a riparian owner constitute his private property that cannot be taken by a railroad company for its own use without just compensation, even when the owner's improvements may conflict with federal navigation law.
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Mb. Chief Justice Waite delivered the-.'opinion of the court.
Although the Supreme Court of Iowa decided that Congress, under the power to regulate commerce, had jurisdiction over the Mississippi River, and having exercised that power in the way specified in sect. 5254, Rev. Stat., all State legislation in conflict therewith was void, still the question remains, whether, if a riparian proprietor improves his property with a view to its use in connection with the river, without complying with this act of Congress, a railroad company, under the power of eminent domain granted by the State, can appropriate his improvements to its own use without his consent and without making him'compensation. This, we think, is a Federal question giving us jurisdiction, but it is a question on which we do not cáre to hear argument. The controversy is not between the public and the riparian owner as to his right to keep, up his improvements. The public does not complain, but the railroad company wants the improvements. In the hands of the company they .will be just as much a nuisance, so far as the public is concerned,' as they can be if kept up by the owner. As between these two parties the improvements are. the property of the riparian proprietor, and if the company wants them for its own use it must make compensation. So the ¡court below has decided, and to our minds its decision was clearly right. While in Iowa it has been held that the State owns the lands lying along, the river between high and low water mark, care was taken in the act of March 18, 1874, to provide that it should not be lawful for any person or corporation to construct or operate any railroad or other obstruction between the shore and the river without compensation to the shore owners. The second section of the act is good, eve'n though the first may conflict with what Congress had before doné.
The motion to dismiss is denied, but that to affirm granted.
Judgment affirmed.
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Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U.S. 1 (U.S. 1894)…an proprietor had no right, without statutory authority, to build out piers into the Mississippi Diver as necessary parts of a boom to receive and retain logs until needed for sawing at his mill by the water side. In Railway Co. v. Renwick, (1880,) 102 U. S. 180, affirming the judgment of the Supreme Court of Iowa in 49 Iowa, 664, it was by virtue of an express statute passed by the legislature of Iowa in 1874, that the owner of a similar .pier and boom recovered compensation for the obstruction of access t…
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Starin & Another v. New York, 115 U.S. 248 (U.S. 1885)
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Ill. Cent. R.R. Co. v. Illinois, 146 U.S. 387 (U.S. 1892)
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