Louisville & N. R. v. Hughes

201 F. 727, 1912 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1064
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Ohio
DecidedOctober 18, 1912
DocketNo. 6,817
StatusPublished

This text of 201 F. 727 (Louisville & N. R. v. Hughes) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Louisville & N. R. v. Hughes, 201 F. 727, 1912 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1064 (S.D. Ohio 1912).

Opinion

HOLLISTER, District Judge

(after stating the facts as above). It is the urgent contention of the defendants that the act of the General Assembly of Ohio and the regulations adopted by the Railroad Commission of that state, and the act of Congress and the regulations [734]*734adopted by the Interstate Commerce Commission, present no real points of conflict with each other, that the Ohio regulations affect intrastate commerce directly and interstate commerce only indirectly, and the-federal regulations affect interstate commerce directly and intrastate commerce only indirectly, and therefore the state, having the right to legislate with respect to intrastate commerce, over which Congress has no power, and Congress having the right to legislate with respect to interstate commerce, over which the state has no power, the two acts and regulations may proceed together and have concurrent operation, each being an exemplification of the power of an inder pendent sovereignty concerning a subject-matter over which .it may lawfully exercise a complete jurisdiction without direct interference with the other.

If defendants’ premises were true, their conclusion might present a question for judicial inquiry, but the'soundness of their logic need not be debated; for, whether their conclusion has any sanction in the law or not (of which no opinion is here expressed), it is founded upon a misapprehension of the operation of these laws and regulations upon the complainant who employs locomotives as instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and of complainant’s right under the Constitution of the United States. Whether or not the fact that these locomotives are engaged solely in such commerce and not directly subject to thé authority of the state under any circumstances would make a different case from one in which the locomotives were instrumentalities of both intrastate and interstate commerce need not be considered (if, indeed, there would be any difference), because the case, as made, has to do only with locomotives engaged in interstate commerce, a subject over which the state has no direct control.

While the purposes of the acts are identical and in most respects the regulations are alike, being in many instances even verbally the same, yet there are differences between them. The resemblances are many and in this discussion are important, in that they, with the differences, show the comprehensive nature of the legislation, and the elaborate detail of the regulations to effect the purposes of the acts, thereby disclosing the extent of regulation to which the respective sovereignties intended to go in order to provide for the safety of persons subject to injury from defective locomotive boilers. The resemblances are to be borne in mind, but this case emphasizes the differences ; for it is upon these that complainant founds its claims of a conflict between the regulations of such character that the federal regulations do and must, under the interpretation by the Supreme Court of the commerce clause of the Constitution, necessarily supersede and displace the state regulations, so far as complainant’s particular locomotives are concerned.

The complainant does not raise, and it is not thought necessary to discuss, a question suggested by the subject-matter — whether or not it is national in character and admits only of one uniform system or plan of regulation, hence a matter with which Congress alone can deal in the exercise of the exclusive jurisdiction in such cases confided to it by the Constitution (Mobile County v. Kimball, 102 U. [735]*735S. 691, 697, 26 L. Ed. 238; Wabash, etc., R. Co. v. Illinois, 118 U. S. 557, 574, 7 Sup. Ct. 4, 30 L. Ed. 244; Robbins v. Shelby Taxing District, 120 U. S. 489, 492, 493, 7 Sup. Ct. 592, 30 L. Ed. 694; Northern Securities Case, 193 U. S. 197, 371, 24 Sup. Ct. 436, 48 L. Ed. 679, as illustrations); for an affirmative answer to the question would not be of benefit to the defendants, and a negative conclusion would still leave the question of the conflict of these regulations open for decision. It is therefore, for the purposes of this case, assumed that the doctrine referred to in the illustrative cases does not apply to the subject-matter of this.

The power of the state of Ohio, in the absence of congressional action, to provide in the manner it has for the inspection of all locomotive boilers within the state, even though a burden, may be thereby incidentally imposed on the owners of locomotives engaged solely in interstate commerce, is conceded by the complainant, which, until the federal regulations were adopted, complied with all of the state requirements, the effectiveness of the operation of which upon it as a carrier of interstate commerce it did not up to that time challenge, and does not now deny; but ever after congressional action and the adoption of the federal regulations it has asserted, and'in this suit asserts, the invalidity as to it of the state requirements, claiming that its duties with respect to boiler inspection are prescribed by the Interstate Commerce Commission to whose regulations alone it is amenable, when they are in conflict with the state regulations or cover the same ground as the state legislation. Considering the case, therefore, only as one of the many involving both state and congressional legislation on the same subject, it is necessary to inquire into the relative powers of the states and of Congress under the Constitution, so far as they have been defined by the Supreme Court.

The principles involved in complainant’s concession are so related to others necessarily to be discussed that some reference to them also is required.

[ 1 ] A state has exclusive power to regulate commerce wholly within its own borders (Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, *195, 6 L. Ed. 23; Sands v. Manistee River Imp. Co., 123 U. S. 288, 295, 8 Sup. Ct. 113, 31 L. Ed. 149; Allen v. Pullman Co., 191 U. S. 171, 180, 181, 24 Sup. Ct. 39, 48 L. Ed. 134; Railway v. Larabee Mills, 211 U. S. 612, 620, 29 Sup. Ct. 214, 53 L. Ed. 352) and the Constitution gives exclusive power to Congress to regulate commerce between the states (article 1, § 8), each being sovereign with respect to the objects committed to it (Chief Justice Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. *316, *410, 4 L. Ed. 579). While the Constitution and the laws made pursuant thereto are the supreme law of the land (Const, art. 6), nevertheless a state may legislate in a great variety of .ways so as to affect interstate commerce and persons engaged in it without constituting a regulation of it within the meaning of that instrument. Sherlock v. Alling, 93 U. S. 99, 103, 23 L. Ed. 819.

[2] Cars, engines, and railroads are the instrumentalities by which transportation is effected between the states, and are, while so en[736]*736gaged, within the power of Congress alone to regulate. Gloucester Ferry Co. v. Pennsylvania, 114 U. S. 196, 204, 5 Sup. Ct. 826, 29 L. Ed. 158; Second Employers’ Liability Cases, 223 U. S. 1, 46, 47, 32 Sup. Ct. 169, 56 L. Ed. 327.

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Bluebook (online)
201 F. 727, 1912 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1064, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/louisville-n-r-v-hughes-ohsd-1912.