Love v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co.

185 F. 321, 1911 U.S. App. LEXIS 3989
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedMarch 29, 1911
DocketNos. 3,333-3,335, 3,368, 3,369, 3,460, 3,461
StatusPublished
Cited by105 cases

This text of 185 F. 321 (Love v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Love v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co., 185 F. 321, 1911 U.S. App. LEXIS 3989 (8th Cir. 1911).

Opinion

SANBORN, Circuit Judge.

These are appeals from orders of the Circuit Court granting interlocutory injunctions which prohibit the appellants, the members of the Corporation Commission of Oklahoma and the Attorney General of that state, from enforcing a provision of its Constitution which reduced the maximum fares for passengers in Oklahoma from three cents to two cents per mile and from enforcing certain orders of the Commission which reduced about 40 per cent, the maximum freight rates in Oklahoma on from 40 to 50 per cent, of the intrastate freight business of the companies in that state. The injunctions were granted, after a full hearing and. a careful consideration of the evidence and the arguments of the parties and upon considered opinions, by Hook, Circuit Judge. 174 Fed. 59; 177 Fed. 493. Many reasons are now urged why the orders granting these injunctions should be reversed.

Counsel for the appellants first invoke the decision of the Supreme Court in Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line, 211 U. S. 210, 29 Sup. Ct. 67, 53 L. Ed. 150, and insist that these suits were prematurely brought. .Tn that case the State Corporation Commission of Virginia made an order prescribing a maximum passenger rate of two cents per mile in that state. The Constitution of Virginia gave to the railroad companies an appeal from this order to the Supreme Court of Appeals of that state, and gave power to that court to supersede the order during the pendency of the appeal. The railroad companies took no appeal, but refused to obey the order, commenced suits in the federal court, and obtained temporary injunctions against its enforcement. The Supreme Court of the United States did not deny the jurisdiction of the United States Circuit Court, or its power to issue the injunctions, but held that the function of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia on the appeal from the order of the Commission was legislative, and that, as the legislative process of fixing the rate was-not complete until an appeal had been taken and had been determined, or until the time to take it had expired, the more courteous and orderly course of pro[324]*324cedure would be for the companies to pursue their appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia before they sought relief from the national court. But the Supreme Court of the United States added:

“It seems to us that the bill should be retained for the present to await the result of the appeals, if the companies see fit to take them. If the appeals are dismissed, as brought too late, the companies will be entitled to decrees. If they are entertained, and the orders of the Commission affirmed, the bills may be dismissed without prejudice, and filed again.”

The companies had not put the prescribed fare into effect in that case. The officers of the state had been restrained from compelling them to do so, and from imposing the penalties provided for their failure so to do, by the injunctions of the federal court. The Virginia appellate court was empowered to grant upon the taking of an appeal, and the Supreme Court might well presume that it would grant, a supersedeas from the order of the Commission pending the appeal, so that the fare prescribed in that case had not gone into effect, and probably would not go into operation until the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia should decide the issues to be presented by the appeals to it, and the opportunity subsequently should be given to the railroad companies to apply to the federal court in equity for relief. The effect of the decision in that case, therefore, was that where the reduced fares or rates prescribed had not taken effect, and probably would not take effect until a state appellate court could, on appeal from the order of the Commission, perform its legislative function of finally fixing them, it was proper that railroad companies should take the appeals, and delay their applications to the federal court for relief until the legislative issues presented by those appeals were decided, or it became reasonably certain in some other way, as by dismissal of the appeals, that the prescribed fares or rates would be put into operation.

The records before us present no such case. The passenger fare of two cents per mile was prescribed by section 37 of the Constitution of Oklahoma, which prohibited a higher rate. No escape from this fiat was given by appeal or by supersedeas, and the only intimation of possible relief from it through the rate-making officers of the state government is found in the proviso which the section contains to the effect that the Corporation Commission shall have the power to exempt any railroad company from the operation of the fare upon satisfactory proof that the company cannot earn a just compensation for its services to the public, unless it is permitted to charge more than two cents per mile for the transportation of passengers within the state. This proviso, however, grants no authority to the Commission to make fares, to fix a reasonable fare, or to determine the reasonableness of any fare fixed. It does not even give the Commission powef to exempt a railroad company from the operation of the two-cent fare, unless that fare and all the other fares and rates of the company, taken together, are proved to its satisfaction to be confiscatory, and the exercise of this power is necessarily not a legislative, but a judicial, function. Its exercise requires the determination of the ques[325]*325tion whether or not section 37 of the Constitution of the state is violative of the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and the jurisdiction to determine that question is granted by the Constitution and the laws of the United States to the federal courts, and no law or act of any state may deprive them of the power or relieve them of the duty to perform this function when those entitled to their decision properly invoke their • action. Chicot County v. Sherwood, 148 U. S. 529, 13 Sup. Ct. 695, 37 L. Ed. 546; General Oil Co. v. Crain, 209 U. S. 211, 212, 28 Sup. Ct. 475, 52 L. Ed. 754; Barber Asphalt Paving Co. v. Morris, 66 C. C. A. 55, 59, 132 Fed. 945. 949. and cases there cited.

The result is that the legislative function of making this fare was 'complete when the state was admitted into the Union, and that was on November 16, 1907. No injunction against an enforcement of this passenger fare was granted to the Midland Valley Railroad Company, but the injunctions issued at the suits of the other companies forbade its enforcement. Upon the admission of the state into the Union these companies reduced their passenger fares from tlieir former charge of three cents per mile to the two cents per mile prescribed, and thereafter obeyed the inhibition of a higher rate until they were relieved in the early part of 1909, by the injunctions here in question. None of them ever applied to the Corporation Commission for exemption from the operation of section 37, and from the time the passenger fare took effect the federal court had plenary power to discharge at any time the judicial function of determining whether or not the effect of the operation of this fare was to deprive the companies of any of their property without just compensation.

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Bluebook (online)
185 F. 321, 1911 U.S. App. LEXIS 3989, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/love-v-atchison-t-s-f-ry-co-ca8-1911.