State Highway Commission v. Ames

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Dawson, J.:

This lawsuit arose out of the purchase of two small tracts of defendant’s land by the state highway commission and out of a contemporaneous written contract by the parties thereto.

The controlling facts were these: Defendant owned a tract of land and a filling station and related equipment situated thereon in the city of Walton. This property abutted on a highway which the state highway commission desired to widen. To do so, it was desirable to purchase two narrow strips of defendant’s land and to induce him to remove his pumps and related…