Opinion
ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA.
No. 835.
Motion to dismiss or affirm. Submitted May 3, 1909. Decided May 17, 1909.
Writ of error to review judgment of the state court in a condemnation proceeding dismissed without opinion for want of jurisdiction.
THIS was a special proceeding commenced by plaintiff in error to condemn land on which to establish a water power and erect an electric light plant. The state court dismissed the proceedings, and among other things as stated in its opinion, held, construing its own statutes and basing its decision upon one of a similar case in the Supreme Court of the United States, Denver Co. v. Alling, 99 U.S. 480, that the plaintiff in error has not the power of eminent domain; but, that in accepting its new charter from the legislature, it accepted it in the status in which it was at the time of the renewal of its old charter with such changes only as were specifically made in the reenacting statute. At the time it accepted its new charter, it had lost all rights which it had ever acquired, if it had ever acquired any by express legislative enactment, the legislature of North Carolina having taken away the power of eminent domain from such companies.
Mr. Thomas Patterson, Mr. Burton Craige, Mr. Thomas J. Jerome and Mr. W.A. Way for defendant in error in support of the motion.
Mr. Frederick M. Leonard for plaintiff in error in opposition thereto.
Writ of error dismissed for want of jurisdiction.