48:5-7. General powers

Every company organized under this article shall have power:

I. To lay out a bridge or bridges with the proper approaches and to construct the same, and for the purposes of cuttings and embankments to take as much more land as may be necessary for the proper construction, maintenance, operation and security of such bridge or bridges. No bridge shall exceed 50 feet in width unless more land shall be required for the slopes of cuts and embankments;

II. To construct suspension drawbridges over any channels, thoroughfares or small creeks or rivers, but no such company shall build a bridge over any fresh water creek or river which is more than 400 feet wide;

III. To take and hold such voluntary grants of real estate and other property as may be necessary for the construction, maintenance and accommodation of its bridge or bridges;

IV. To purchase, hold and use such real estate or other property as may be necessary to accomplish the objects of its incorporation;

V. To enter upon all lands or waters to explore, survey, and locate the route of any such bridge, with the proper approaches and necessary buildings, appurtenances, and conveniences, doing no unnecessary injury to private or other property, and subject to responsibility for all damages which shall be done thereto;

VI. To condemn and take land necessary for its business, in accordance with chapter 1 of the Title Eminent Domain (s. 20:1-1 et seq.);

VII. To borrow such sums of money from time to time not to exceed in the whole the amount of its capital stock, as shall be necessary to build, construct, maintain and repair and keep in repair any such bridges with the necessary approaches, and to secure the repayment thereof by the execution, negotiation and sale of bonds secured by mortgages on its property and franchises;

VIII. In the manner or mode of procedure and with the effect and subject to the restrictions and liabilities prescribed by Title 14, Corporations, General, and as fully and completely as a corporation organized under said Title 14, to purchase, take by devise or bequest, hold and convey real and personal property, inside or outside of this State, and mortgage any such real or personal property, and its franchises, to sell or exchange all or substantially all of its property and assets, including its good will, to lease its property and franchises to any other corporation or to any person, individual, partnership or public body, to purchase and dispose of the stock of any other corporation and pay therefor, to enter into, effect and carry out a joint agreement with any other corporation or with any person, individual, partnership or public body for their merger or consolidation, and to dissolve or be dissolved and be wound up.

The powers and privileges conferred upon any such company and described in subparagraph VIII of this section shall be vested in such company and may be fully and completely exercised by it at its discretion notwithstanding any restriction, limitation, condition or other provision in this article contained or implied, but in the event of conveyance or mortgage of any bridge constructed by such company or the sale or exchange of all or substantially all of its property and assets or the effecting and carrying out of a joint agreement with any other corporation or corporations for their merger or consolidation or the dissolution and winding up of such company, any person, individual, partnership, corporation or public body thereby acquiring such bridge or otherwise succeeding to the rights, privileges, powers and franchises of such company with respect to such bridge (hereinafter called "successor" ) and the successor's right, title and interest in and to such bridge shall be subject to and governed by all of the restrictions, limitations, conditions or other provisions in this article contained or implied and such successor, be he or it a person, individual, partnership, corporation or public body, shall be subject to and governed by this section and sections 48:5-8 to 48:5-12, inclusive, of this article.

IX. To exercise all other powers hereby granted or now or hereafter lawfully granted such corporations.

Amended by L.1966, c. 197, s. 1, eff. July 21, 1966.