Sargent v. City of Tacoma

Citations

• 10 Wash. 212
• 38 P. 1048
• 1894 Wash. LEXIS 190

Syllabus

<p>municipal corporations — liability for change of street GRADE — LIMITATIONS.</p> <p>The establishment of street grades within the meaning of Gen. Stat. § 759, prohibiting changes of grades without prepayment of damages, where injury accrues, contemplates a grade established by the actual improvement of a street to a grade, or the formal adoption of one by ordinance or resolution.</p> <p>Under Laws 1883, p. 63 (Gen. Stat. § 759), prohibiting a change in the established grade of any street without first compensating the owner of any building constructed upon said street for the accriiing damage, an action will not lie for damages on the part of a property owner who has constructed a building on a street prior to the establishment of the grade thereof by ordinance, although he may have done the work pursuant to grade stakes set him by a deputy showing a grade proposed by the city surveyor, and in accordance with which bids for the improvement of the street had been called for, but no other action had been taken by the city council and mayor confirming or establishing the proposed grade, which they afterwards by ordinance fixed several feet lower.</p> <p>The plaintiff in an action for the recovery of damages resulting from a change of street grade cannot file an amended complaint setting up as a second cause of action the injury to his land caused by raising the grade of the street above the natural surface, when the work has been done more than three years prior to the filing of the amended complaint.</p>