City of Shreveport v. Shreveport City Railway Co.

Citations

• 104 La. 260

Syllabus

<p>Syllabus.</p> <p>A street railway company in the City of Shreveport is legally bound, under the provisions of Sections 2 and 3 of Act No. 10 of 189G, and an ordinance adopted in pursuance thereof, to pay and reimburse to the municipality, a sufficient amount to cover the cost of the pavement with vitrified brick of the space its road-beds occupy in the streets of the city, and two feet on the outside of the rails on each side of said tracks in addition, such additional space being required for the operation of its tracks in the exercise of its franchise and right-of-way.</p> <p>Notwithstanding the opinion of this court in City of Shreveport vs. Prescott, 51 Ann. 1895, does not constitute a bar against the assertion of the rights of the defendant street railroad companies, it is a strong and very appropriate precedent.</p> <p>On Reheaeins.</p> <p>1. Act No. 10 of 1896 authorizes the assessment of street railway companies for the paving of streets through which their roads run, and, in specific terms, establishes the Basis upon which the liability of such companies is to be ascertained. And it is incompetent for a municipal corporation and a railway company, by convention, to change the basis so established so as to reduce such liability below that properly arising under the statute.</p> <p>2. In this case, an obligation with respect to. street maintenance, entered into prior to the passage of the Act of 1896, and predicated upon a franchise for a single track road, having been superseded by a compromise, also relating to a single track road and entered into after the passage of that act; and such compromise having been, thereafter, annulled by a contract providing for the contraction and maintenance of a double track road, the fact that the stipulation in the last contract, with respect to the liability of the railway companies for paving, cannot be enforced, because repugnant to law, does not revive the pre-existing convention on the subject, inasmuch as the surr