Lilly Co. v. Northern Pacific Railway Co.

117 P. 401, 64 Wash. 589, 1911 Wash. LEXIS 873
Washington Supreme Court·Decided August 19, 1911·No. No. 9484·Published·Cited by 7 cases

Opinion

Fullerton, J.

This is an appeal by the plaintiff from a judgment dismissing its action after a demurrer to the complaint therein had been interposed and sustained.

[590] The complaint, after alleging the corporate capacity of the defendant and that it was a common carrier of both interstate and intrastate commerce, continued as follows:

“(3) That between the 6th day of July, 1904, and the 14th day of June, 1909, inclusive, the said railway company for hire, undertook and agreed to transport and deliver from said St. Paul and other points along its line of railway, freight in car load lots to be delivered to the said plaintiff at Seattle, state of Washington.
“(4) That the said defendant falsely and fraudulently represented to this' plaintiff at said time that there was certain switching charges levied by its connecting carrier, Columbia & Puget Sound Railway Company, for switching said car load lots of freight in and onto said track, onto or near the warehouse of this plaintiff, so that said cars might and could be unloaded by this plaintiff, and that said switching charges were made and collected by said connecting carrier from all consignees from all points along its line of railway, and falsely and fraudulently represented to this plaintiff that said switching charges were charged and collected by said company from each and every and all of the consignees receiving freight in car load lots over said Northern Pacific Railway Company’s line into Seattle ¡situated in all respects similar to this plaintiff, when in truth and in fact said defendant was absorbing or paying itself the said switching charges of many other consignees so situated as aforesaid and from same point or points in all respects similar to those from which plaintiff’s freight was shipped as aforesaid, and by means of said false and fraudulent representations by the said defendant, this plaintiff was induced to, and did, pay to the Columbia & Puget Sound Railway Co., between said times the sum of one thousand ninety and 50-100 ($1090.50) dollars, to the damage of this plaintiff in said sum.
“(5) That this plaintiff for the first time on or about, to wit, October &7th, 1909, discovered that the said representations, by and through which and by means of which the defendant caused this plaintiff to pay the sum of one thousand ninety and 50-100 ($1090.50) dollars as1 aforesaid were false and untrue, and by means of which tins plaintiff was damaged by an unjust and illegal discrimination in said sum of one thousand ninety and 50-100 ($1090.50) dollars.”

[591] The demurrer was based on two grounds, first, that the court was without jurisdiction of the subject-matter of the action; and second, that the complaint did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. The complaint, it will be observed, is founded on the assumption that the respondent, a common carrier, made unjust discriminations to the appellant’s damage in freight charges for interstate commerce shipments between the shipments' of the appellant and other shippers similarly situated.

The first branch of the demurrer suggests the question whether the act to regulate commerce, and the acts amendatory thereof, enacted by the Congress of the United States, have taken away a shipper’s1 right to maintain an action in the state courts for unjust discrimination on the part of a common carrier of interstate commerce. We do not think that it did, or was so intended. While the ninth section of the act (U. S. Compiled Laws 1901, p. 3159) might seemingly confine the remedies for such a breach of duty to the commission provided for by the act, or to the district or circuit courts of the United States', the twenty-second section (Id., p. 3170-71), which was inserted to more clearly define the operation of the act, provides that “nothing in this act contained shall in any way abridge or alter the remedies now existing at common law or by statute, but the provisions of this act are in addition to such remedies.” This restriction on the prior provisions of the act makes it clear that the Congress did not intend to take away the jurisdiction of the state courts to maintain actions for breaches of dutjr in the carrier which would give rise to a cause of action at common law or under the state statute. Illinois Cent. R. Co. v. Henderson Elev. Co., 138 Ky. 220, 127 S. W. 779; Southern Pac. Co. v. Crenshaw, 5 Ga. App. 675. The common law, as administered by the American courts at least, gave a shipper a right of action against a common carrier for a discrimination in freight rates between the shipper and another similarly situated, whenever the effect of the discrimination was to injure [592] the shipper in his trade or business. All discriminations were not actionable, but unjust and unreasonable discriminations, those that operated to the special injury of the shipper against whom the discrimination was made, were clearly so. Scofield v. Railway Co., 43 Ohio St. 571, 54 Am. Rep. 846; Messenger v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 36 N. J. L. 407, 13 Am. Rep. 457; McDuffee v. Portland & Rochester R., 52 N. H. 430, 13 Am. Rep. 72; Kellogg v. Sowerby, 93 App. Div. 124, 87 N. Y. Supp. 412; Vincent v. Chicago etc. R. Co. 49 Ill. 33. We think, therefore, that the superior court had jurisdiction of the subject-matter of the appellant’s action.

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Lilly Co. v. Northern Pacific Railway Co., 117 P. 401, 64 Wash. 589, 1911 Wash. LEXIS 873 (Wash. 1911).

117 P. 401 (Lilly Co. v. Northern Pacific Railway Co.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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