Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. McGinnis

Citations

• 79 Ill. 269

Syllabus

<p>1. Railroads—not liable for damages to property on streets along which they run. It has been the long settled doctrine in this State, that when, by the charter of a city, its local authorities are vested with exclusive control over the streets, and these authorities grant permission to lay down railway tracks along a street, the owners or occupants of property fronting on such street can not enjoin the laying of such track, nor be allowed any damages or compensation for such use of a street.</p> <p>3. Measure of damages—in suit against a railroad company for injwry to property upon a street. The recovery of damages in a suit against a railroad company for injury to property fronting on a street in a city over which it passes, where there is any liability at all, is confined to the direct physical injury done to the property by the operation of the road; and it is erroneous to permit the plaintiff to prove what the value of the property and its rental value is with the railroad, and what it would be without the railroad.</p> <p>3. Where the plaintiff, in a suit against a railroad company to recover for damages to his property, occasioned by the building and operating the road along a public street in front of the property, proved what, in the opinion of witnesses, the rental value of the property would have been without the railroad and what it was with the railroad, it was admissible for the defendant, in rebuttal, to show that there were a gas factory and starch factory near the premises, to lay the foundation for a judgment that the depreciation of rental value was not wholly due to the railroad, and to what extent these other causes might have contributed to produce such depreciation.</p> <p>4. And in such a suit, where the plaintiff testified that certain trestle work upon which the railroad track was laid, in front of plaintiff’s property, was unnecessarily high, such testimony tended to show that the defendant had been guilty of negligence, and that the pla