Smith v. City of Atlanta

Lumpkin, Justice.

The constitution provides that: “Private property shall not be taken, or damaged, for public purposes, without just and adequate compensation being first paid.” Code, §5024. It appeared in the present case that the city constructed through the property of the plaintiffs a permanent public sewer. This could not possibly be done without taking and appropriating a portion of the property itself. Land has “in its legal significance, an indefinite extent, upwards as well as downwards; . . . whatever is in a direct line between the surface of any land and the centre of the earth,…