And heretofore the Court of Claims, with a fair degree of consistency, has held that a municipal corporation is a "person," and the doctrine seems not to have been challenged. ( O'Bryan v. State of New York, 68 Misc. Rep. 618; revd. on other grounds and new trial granted, 148 App. Div. 542; Village of Seneca Falls v. State of New York, 115 Misc. Rep. 35; contra, Town of New Lebanon v. State of New York, 111 id. 310.) We may say, therefore, that the city of Little Falls is a person who may legally present a claim for damages sustained from the construction of the Barge canal.
While the point there under discussion was a construction of the Labor Law, the language employed is entirely applicable to the case presented in this record. Quite a similar construction was adopted by Judge Rodenbeck in the case of O'Bryan v. State of New York, 68 Misc. 618. He then held that the expression "individual or corporation" used in section 264 of the Code of Civil Procedure, and in this same section 47 of the Canal Law, included a town, as a town was a corporation. A village is as much of a corporation as a town and both are defined to be such by section 2 of the General Municipal Law. Laws of 1909, chap. 29.