Board of Levee Com'rs v. Jackson's Estate

Citations

• 113 La. 124
• 36 So. 912
• 1904 La. LEXIS 627

Syllabus

<p>EMINENT DOMAIN — LEVEE COMMISSIONERS — DISCRETION — VALUATION—APPEAL—REVIEW — POWERS OIP COURT.</p> <p>_ 1. Plaintiffs have large powers and broad discretion in determining the area of land needful in constructing new levees or in repairing the old.</p> <p>Although it is not unlimited, where the Board of State Engineers have approved a proposed plan for repairing or constructing a levee, and the Board of Levee Commissioners have finally acted on the plan as approved, the courts will not interfere, unless it is evident that the Board of State Engineers have erred and the Board of Levee Commissioners have exceeded their authority.</p> <p>2. Defendant may show that plaintiffs seek to expropriate too large an area of land, and may plead and prove very prejudicial error about to be committed.</p> <p>This must be sustained by decided preponderance of evidence, otherwise the action of the board will not be interfered with.</p> <p>3. Although it has been repeatedly held that valuation placed upon property by a jury for expropriation will not be changed on appeal, this ruling is not always controlling where, on the face of the papers, it appears that the verdict as to valuation was not accepted with absolute certainty of its correctness.</p> <p>On Rehearing.</p> <p>4. In matters of expropriation the conclusions reached by the jury as to the value of property will not be disturbed by the Supreme Court, unless such conclusions are very clearly wrong; particularly is this so where it is the state itself which is exercising the right of eminent domain for the benefit of the general public.</p> <p>5. A party who has for years paid taxes to the state on property which is sought to be expropriated, by the state itself, for purposes strictly public, is not in position to argue that the assessment made of that- property for many years back should not enter at all as a factor in the consideration of the question of value.</p> <p>Breaux, C. J., dissenting in part.</p> <p>(Syllabus b