Camden v. United States Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry Co.

59 A. 523, 68 N.J. Eq. 279, 2 Robb. 279, 1904 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 35
CourtNew Jersey Court of Chancery
DecidedNovember 19, 1904
StatusPublished

This text of 59 A. 523 (Camden v. United States Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New Jersey Court of Chancery primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Camden v. United States Cast Iron Pipe & Foundry Co., 59 A. 523, 68 N.J. Eq. 279, 2 Robb. 279, 1904 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 35 (N.J. Ct. App. 1904).

Opinion

Grey, V. C.

The complainant is a trolley company, which owns and operates an electric railway for the carriage of passengers from Camden to Trenton.

A portion of its route runs on a single track, longitudinally, through Pearl street, in the city of Burlington. The defendant, the United States Cast Iron Pipe and Foundry Company, owns both sides and the bed of that street, and maintains a’large pipe-making plant there, and has for some years connected the business carried on upon one side of that street with that done on the other by a steam railroad, which also connects with the tracks operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company running through Broad street, in Burlington.

The defendant company has obtained leave from the city of Burlington to build three additional tracks across Pearl street, for the conduct of its business, to be used solely for the passage of freight cars moved by steam engines. Two of these crossings, at the points marked B and G on the diagram, it proposes to [288]*288build at once, and the other, crossing Pearl street at a point located three hundred feet east from the east side of Hulme street, the defendant company does not intend to build at this time.

In the ordinance of the city of Burlington authorizing the defendant’s crossings there are provisions that the speed of the defendant’s freight cars moving across Pearl street shall not exceed five miles an hour, and that its flagman'shall give notice of its approaching trains.

The complainant does not challenge the defendant’s proposed crossings because of their location or construction. What it objects to is the use which the defendant company proposes to make of these crossings by passing its freight cars over them. This proposed use at .the points B and 0, the complainant insists, will be an intrusion by the defendant upon the complainant’s right to run its railway tracks in Pearl street at any speed which it may choose. The complainant further contends that the provisions of the city ordinance that the defendant company shall limit the speed of its freight cars in crossing the complainant’s tracks to five miles an hour, and give notice by flagmen, &c., is insufficient as a protection against the possibility of collisions between the complainant’s railway cars, moving at the speed at which they are entitled to travel, and the defendant’s freight cars crossing the electric railway tracks. The complainant therefore insists that tire right asserted by the defendant company to cross the electric railway tracks at grade, in the mode proposed, conflicts with the complainant company’s right to drive its cars along Pearl street at unlimited speed, and entitles the complainant to the intervention of this court to compel the defendant company to put in some sufficient derailing device at the proposed crossings, to protect against this alleged danger.

The proofs show that the complainant company runs over fifty cars a day along Pearl street, and that it intends to increase probably to double that number. That the defendant company now uses its present one-track crossing, at the point A, eight to twelve times a day for the passage of cars drawn by a locomotive, and less frequently for the passage of hand cars pushed by the [289]*289men. When the proposed new sidings are put in, most of the drilling of cars will be done inside the defendant company’s gates, without crossing the street, which will decrease the number of movements across the complainant company’s tracks very materially, so that at the outside they will not probably exceed four or five in the course of a day. Other changes in the defendant company’s work, attendant upon the construction of the new crossings, will also tend to lessen the number of movements across the complainant’s railway tracks on Pearl street and to clear the view of the points of proposed intersection.

The evidence shows that there is very little public highway travel along that part of Pearl street in which these proposed crossings by the defendant company will be located. So little, indeed, that the passage of ordinary vehicles across the points B and G, where the defendant company’s proposed crossings will intersect the complainant company’s railway, does not enter into consideration in ascertaining whether special protective devices should be there used.

The trend of the railway company’s complaint is that the construction of the defendant’s two crossings at the points B and G, unless some derailing device be there adopted, will compel the railway company, for safety’s sake, to check the speed of its cars in order to prevent collisions with the defendant company’s freight ears crossing its tracks.

The complainant’s argument is that under the law it is entitled to drive its cars along Pearl street, in the city of Burlington, at unlimited speed; that the intersections of its railway by the crossing tracks of any other railroad at grade must, per se, constitute a danger and be an interference with its chartered rights; that these circumstances entitle it to the intervention of this court to compel the defendant company to put in some protective device at the proposed crossings which will minimize the danger from collision of moving cars at those points.

The proofs in this case show that the proposed crossings B and G are so located that the employes of either company can readily see the movements of the cars of the ether as the proposed crossings are approached.

[290]*290The crossing at the point A on the diagram has been used by the defendant company for years before the complainant built its electric railway. The complainant company makes no proposition to arrange for the installment of any protective device for that crossing. It may therefore be assumed that it expects to avoid possible dangers at the present crossing A, by instructions to its own employes to drive their cars at a slower rate of speed when approaching that point.

The crossing B, where the complainant insists a protective device should be installed, is distant only three hundred feet from the present crossing at the 'point A. The two crossings A and B lie so near each other, and are in their surrounding conditions so nearly identical, that any checking of speed by the complainant’s motormen at the crossing A may easily be continued until the crossing B is passed.

It may be true, as stated by the complainant’s counsel, that no limitation of the speed at which its electric cars may travel in the streets of a city, is imposed by the statute under which the complainant company is incorporated, or by the ordinances of the city of Burlington, but, in my view, that does not justify the continuous running of electric ears in public highways at a rate of speed which endangers every other use of such thoroughfares.

All the cases which have dealt with the status of street horse railroads and their successors, the electric railways, using public highways longitudinally, have been based on the theory that these uses of the highway are within those for which the land was originally taken by the public for a highway (Hinchman v. Paterson Railroad Co., 17 N. J. Eq. (2 C. E. Gr.) 75; Halsey v. Rapid Transit Co., N. J. Eq. (2 Dick.) 380);

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Bluebook (online)
59 A. 523, 68 N.J. Eq. 279, 2 Robb. 279, 1904 N.J. Ch. LEXIS 35, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/camden-v-united-states-cast-iron-pipe-foundry-co-njch-1904.