In re Lawrence

Headnote

Matter of Lawrence, 179 App. Div. 903 , affirmed.

Appeal from an order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the second judicial department, entered June 8, 1917, which reversed an order of Special Term granting an application for the appointment of commissioners to determine the compensation to which petitioners were entitled by reason of a change of grade of Ocean Avenue in the village of Lawrence. The street called Ocean avenue, which had been used as a street for over twenty-five years in the village of Lawrence, passes petitioners’ property, situated between Osborne and Narragansett avenues. In the year 1915, as an incident to paving. part of Ocean avenue, the road in front of petitioners’ premises was raised so that the center fine thereof in one place was as much as two and forty-eight one-hundredths feet higher than the old center line. From this point, both east and west for about one

hundred feet, the fill was less and less until at one end it amounted to practically nothing. At the Narragansett avenue end, beyond the petitioners’ premises, it resulted in a cut-off of about one and one-half feet or a little less than that. It is for the raising of the roadway, which they claim "constituted a change of grade, that damages are claimed by the petitioners. The respondent maintained that the petition should be dismissed for the reasons: That the petitioners had not proved that the grade of said Ocean avenue had ever been established; that if the grade had been established, they had not proved that it had been changed under the provisions of section 159 of the Village Law, and that the petitioners had not proved title to all the property as to which damages were claimed in the petition.