Ohio & Mississippi Railway Co. v. Wachter

Citations

• 123 Ill. 440
• 15 N.E. 279

Syllabus

<p>1. Eminent domain—damages, present and prospective, involved in condemnation proceedings—as constituting a single cause of action—remedy. All special damages, present and prospective, to the owner of lands,, resulting or to result from the proper construction, maintenance and operating of a railroad, under the laws of this State, constitute, as to such land owner, one single, indivisible cause of action, which may be enforced under the Eminent Domain act, or any other appropriate form of action.</p> <p>2. Same—subsequent purchaser—of Ms rights in respect to such damages as were, or might have been, considered in the proceeding to condemn. Where such right of action has once accrued by the location and construction of a railroad, and the owner of the land thereby injured or damaged conveys it to another, the latter can maintain no action for any damages he may subsequently sustain, which might have been anticipated and allowed as prospective damages in any suit which his grantor might have brought in his own name.</p> <p>3. Same—of damages resulting from causes subsequent to condemnation, as affording a further cause of action. Notwithstanding the condemnation of land for a railroad, and the payment of the compensation or damages awarded the land owner, the company will be liable to him or his-grantee for damages resulting from its negligence, either in the construction, maintaining or operating_of its road.</p> <p>4. So where a railroad company, in constructing its road over a natnrai water-course, makes and maintains a solid embankment across such stream, with an insufficient culvert or opening to permit the free passage of water, or suffers such opening to be so obstructed as in ordinary floods and freshets, to throw the water back and inundate the lands above, it will he liable in damages to the land owner, in an action on the case. In such case, the payment of damages to the owner or his grantor, either in a proceeding to condemn or in an action, will afford