WEST RIVER BRIDGE COMPANY v. DIX 6 Howard 529 (1848)

The West River Bridge case challenged a Vermont law of 1839 authorizing county officials to expropriate the rights of way, real estate, or entire franchises of chartered companiesin order to provide their communities with free public roads. County officials condemned the entire franchise and property of the West River Bridge Company, which had been given a hundred-year franchise under a charter of 1795 for a bridge near Brattleboro, an important market town. The stockholders were awarded $4,000 in damages. The company's appeal was rejected by the Vermont Supreme Court, and the case was then carried to the United States Supreme Court.

daniel webster, as counsel for the company, sought in his arguments to reopen virtually all the issues of charles river bridge v. warren bridge company (1837). He contended that rising popular disregard for franchised rights of corporations would legitimate the worst "levelling ultraisms or Antirentism or Agrarianism or Abolitionism." Eminent domain was a power inappropriate to republican government, he contended, and the bridge taking was in blatant violation of the contract clause. Nonetheless, the Court, with Justice james m. wayne dissenting, upheld Vermont's action. Each of the three opinions filed declared that eminent domain was a power fundamental to the states, had long been exercised by them, was not restrained by the contract clause, and extended as much to franchises as to any other type of property. As the first Supreme Court ruling that dealt directly with the states' power of eminent domain and related procedural matters, West River Bridge complemented the Charles River Bridge decision; both supported the states' authority to accommodate technological change and social and entrepreneurial needs.

Harry N. Scheiber
(1986)