Montgomery Amusement Co. v. Montgomery Traction Co.

139 F. 353, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 4689
CourtU.S. Circuit Court for the District of Alabama
DecidedJuly 12, 1905
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 139 F. 353 (Montgomery Amusement Co. v. Montgomery Traction Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Alabama primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Montgomery Amusement Co. v. Montgomery Traction Co., 139 F. 353, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 4689 (circtdal 1905).

Opinion

JONES, District Judge.

This case has been ably and elaborately argued. The facts, save as to the estoppel, are without dispute, and of many things not explicitly stated in the record a court sitting in this locality may well take judicial notice. The amusement company assails the right of the traction company to enter upon the leased premises on various grounds, which have been grouped under appropriate heads for convenience of discussion.

1. Estoppel. If the amusement company is estopped, as claimed in the answer, to object to the entry of the traction company, that ends this case. On a preliminary motion, in the absence of "fullest evidence, courts are reluctant to. pass upon questions which go to [356]*356the very root of the litigation. It is only necessary to say in the present posture of this case that the answer does not allege directly, but only by inference, that the contract by which the traction company succeeded to the rights of Massey Wilson and associates, and built its lines through Capitol Heights into' the park, would not have been made, but upon the faith of- statements made by officers of the amusement company when the entry of the traction company was under discussion. Whatever view is taken of the affidavits, which are in material conflict in other respects, it is clear that no definite conclusion or agreement was reached as to any particular thing. The sale of the property of the amusement company, the keeping up of a place of amusement by the traction company at Pickett Springs, and other things, were discussed. It seems that any agreement as to any entry into the park was dependent upon the legal rights of the amusement company, as it might be advised by counsel. When the last meeting broke up, defendant was informed that complainant could make no legal agreement, and insisted upon an indemnifying bond, etc. Certainly no agreement whatever was reached as to the location of tracks at any particular place on the leased grounds, or as to the reasonableness of the entry atcually made. The whole evidence, however, leaves upon the mind the impression that the officers of the traction company were led to believe that no bona fide resistance or objection was intended or would be made by the amusement company to any reasonable entry the traction company might make into the leased grounds. This feature relieves the defendant of the character.of a wanton and high handed invader of the premises, certainly as to a large part of the property taken, and undermines much of the force of the earnest argument of complainant’s counsel that a court of equity ought not to permit the retention, under the circumstances of this case, of a possession acquired by force and a high hand. If an entry and occupation be lawful when properly made, and become unlawful only because the entry is by force at the hands of one from whom the possession is wrongfully withheld, a court of equity, in the absence of circumstances of irreparable injury from the mode of entry and occupation, will not, by the use of its extraordinary powers, protect the possession in favor of one who wrongfully sought to withhold it, but will leave such a complainant to' redress the forcible trespass upon his possession by the ordinary civil and criminal remedies. The facts as now presented not making out an estoppel, it is necessary to consider the rights of the parties on the merits.

2. Power Reserved Not Exhausted. It is objected that the power reserved in the lease to grant a right of way for street railway pur- • poses had been exhausted before Walker and wife made the deed to the traction company, because Walker and wife acquiesced in and consented to the prior entry into the park of the Montgomery Street Railway Company, and its use of a part of the premises as a station for receiving and delivering of passengers. The value of the leased premises to Ayers, to whose rights the street railway company succeeded, with the assent of the lessor, and the ability of the [357]*357lessees to make a profit out of the enterprise, depended upon the patronage secured by the park. The number of customers would be fixed by the cheapness, comfort, and speed of travel to and from the city of Montgomery, whose population was the only source from which it was contemplated the patrons of the park would be drawn. The means by which persons could be landed within the grounds was therefore a matter of prime importance to the lessees. The lease and the purposes for which it was made, and the circumstances under which it was made, inevitably vested in the lessee and his assigns, during the life of the lease, wide discretion to determine for themselves how this vital want of the park should best be met. The lessees had the right, so long as they exercised it without permanent injury to the freehold, to solicit and permit the entrance into the park of any vehicle which brought customers into it. They had the same right to admit a street car as they had to admit carriages. They had the same right to permit the construction of a roadbed into the park for a street railway as they had to make driveways for automobiles and vehicles drawn by horse power. The lessors could not have defeated the exercise of this right if they had objected, provided the power was exercised in such a manner as not to permanently injure the freehold. The entry of the street railway into the park is not challenged on that ground. The assent of the Walkers to an entry of a street railway into the park, not made at their instance, and which they could not prevent, cannot work a forfeiture of the right reserved by them. The act here relied on gives no proof of any intent to abandon the right, and furnishes no basis for an estoppel.

3. Railway within Contemplated Class. It is urged that the railway of the traction company does not fall within the class of street railways the parties contemplated. Street railways superseded stagecoaches, omnibus lines, „and, in large measure, hacks, in carrying passengers to and from points in cities'and towns and to suburban places. They went originally only to points reached by public highways. The public convenience and safety alike demanded that the grade of such highways should not be altered to meet the needs of a new method of conveyance which used these highways jointly with travelers by other modes. They did not need to- go upon private property. The law did not contemplate that they should. Besides, the value of private property adjacent to these highways practically forbade its acquisition, if the law had permitted it, for use as a right of way. Being thus limited in their sphere of operation and powers, the term “street railway,” in legal and popular acceptation, at first included only surface roads built upon streets and public highways for the carriage of passengers in and about cities and towns and adjacent suburban places. Under the influence of changed conditions of population and social life, these surface roads on the streets and highways began to serve the wants of the people in places not in any city or town, but in the vicinity thereof, and sometimes reached out to places not upon any public highway. The Legislature of this state, recognizing the usefulness of street railways, and the changed conditions which had [358]*358grown up, conferred upon them larger discretion as to their termini, and gave them in some instances the power to condemn private property for rights of way to reach their termini.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
139 F. 353, 1905 U.S. App. LEXIS 4689, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/montgomery-amusement-co-v-montgomery-traction-co-circtdal-1905.