Chicago, Danville & Vincennes Railroad v. City of Chicago

Citations

• 121 Ill. 176
• 11 N.E. 907
• 1887 Ill. LEXIS 912

Syllabus

<p>1. Railroads— USE OF streets — certainty required in giving the right—an ordinance construed. A permission to a railway company to occupy a public street with railway tracks, must plainly appear, and not be left to be derived by doubtful implication, from the generality of language used, which does not unmistakably manifest the intention to give such permission.</p> <p>2. A city ordinance, after a careful mention and specification of what streets might be used by a railway company in which to lay down its tracks and side-tracks, contained a general clause giving authority also to lay down all such tracks “as may be necessary to the convenient use of any depot grounds said company may now own or hereafter acquire in the vicinity of or adjoining said line of road, ” without the specific mention of any streets: Held, that such general clause gave no authority in respect to the use of the streets, additional to those which had been specifically named in the preceding part of the ordinance.</p> <p>3. Same—grant in charter, as not extending to use of streets in incorporated cities. Authority in the charter of a railway company to construct a railroad from Vincennes, in Indiana, to and into the city of Chicago, with the general power to cross any road or highway on the route, is to be held only as giving such power outside of the corporate limits of the city. By no fair intendment can it be held as a grant of the use of the streets of the city for tracks of the road.</p>