Public Service Commission v. Edwards Motor Transit Co.

179 Misc. 343, 39 N.Y.S.2d 119, 1943 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1514
CourtNew York Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 19, 1943
StatusPublished

This text of 179 Misc. 343 (Public Service Commission v. Edwards Motor Transit Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering New York Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Public Service Commission v. Edwards Motor Transit Co., 179 Misc. 343, 39 N.Y.S.2d 119, 1943 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1514 (N.Y. Super. Ct. 1943).

Opinion

Bergan, J.

Respondents are corporations engaged in the transportation of passengers by bus. The corporations have identical names and are closely integrated in organization, management, and the use of facilities. One is a New York corporation; the other a Pennsylvania corporation. The New York corporation holds a certificate of convenience and necessity from the petitioner Public Service Commission authorizing it to transport passengers in intrastate commerce in New York between Buffalo and Springville. The Pennsylvania corporation holds a certificate of convenience and necessity from the Interstate Commerce Commission authorizing it to transport passengers in interstate commerce between Buffalo and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Public Service Commission maintains this proceeding to restrain the respondents from transporting passengers in intrastate commerce between Buffalo and Salamanca, a city in the State of New York, without authorization pursuant to the laws of the State. Salamanca is beyond Springville, N. Y., the terminus of the intrastate route authorized for the New York corporation, which holds no certificate to transport passengers to and from Salamanca. It is also a stop on the interstate route of the Pennsylvania corporation. Concededly the Pennsylvania corporation is authorized to carry passengers between Salamanca and points outside New York contemplated within the certificate of the Interstate Commerce Commission. The problem presented [345]*345is whether either corporation, under their respective authorizations, may transport passengers between Salamanca and Buffalo or other points within the State of New York.

Upon the trial the facts were stipulated or presented fully by exhibits concerning which there was no dispute. It is readily found from the stipulation, the tickets sold between Buffalo and Salamanca, the tariffs and schedules received in evidence, and other exhibits, that the Pennsylvania corporation carries passengers between Buffalo and Salamanca. The unity in management and control between the two corporations is so marked that it must also be found that the New York corporation carries passengers between Buffalo and Salamanca. Their officers are substantially the same; the tickets sold for the two corporations by the same agency in Buffalo are indistinguishable; the New York corporation uses entirely buses of the Pennsylvania corporation ; tickets are furnished for both corporations to the Buffalo agency by the Pennsylvania corporation, and the revenues received for both are remitted by the agency without segregation to the Pennsylvania corporation where they are later segregated.

Moreover, the New York corporation applied in 1938 to the Common Council of the city of Salamanca for permission to operate a bus line through its streets in intrastate commerce, and permission was refused. Its original application to the Public Service Commission for a certificate of convenience and necessity contemplated operations to the city of Salamanca but, on failing to obtain the city’s permission, this part of its application was withdrawn. In view of the integration of the corporations and the facts relating to the method of operation of the New York corporation, if an injunction is granted against the Pennsylvania corporation it must extend to both.

The city of Salamanca is in the Allegany Indian Reservation. The Pennsylvania corporation contends that the Allegany Indian Reservation is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States; that transportation between points within the State of New York and points within the Indian Reservation is not intrastate commerce; that such commerce is within the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission exclusively; that it has received the permission of the Seneca Nation of Indians, the appropriate Indian authority in the Reservation, granting it permission to operate within the Reservation on the route which it uses, and that the Interstate Commerce Commission has granted it the authority of the United States to operate within the* Reservation. Therefore, it is contended that the certificate of the Public Service Commission is not required and that the operation may not be restrained.

[346]*346Whatever else commerce between points in the State of New York and the Allegany Reservation may be, it is not interstate commerce. An Indian nation is not a state of the union. (Cherokee Nation v. State of Georgia, 5 Peters [U. S.] 1, 16.) And'it is not, as Chief Justice Marshall pointed out in that decision, a foreign nation (p. 18). “ The relation of the Indians to the United States is marked by peculiar and cardinal distinctions which exist nowhere else.” Therefore, the commerce within the State with an Indian Nation is intrastate commerce in so far as the authority of the United States to regulate it is made dependent upon its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. But the United States is vested with the power to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes. (U. S. Const., art. 1, § 8.) To the extent Congress has occupied this field, a State is excluded from jurisdiction.

The city of Salamanca, while geographically located within the Allegany Indian Reservation, is a modern city of white inhabitants,- organized under the laws of New York. (L. 1913, ch. 507.) Transportation by bus of passengers between this city and other points is surely not commerce with an Indian tribe within the contemplation of the Constitution in the delegation of power in this field to Congress, and, indeed, does not relate to Indians or tó Indian tribes at all.

While the United States has always regarded the regulation of Indian affairs as being within its special province and as essentially national in character, the history of the relations between the people of New York and the Indians living within the territory of the State requires special treatment in considering the power of the State over Indian reservations and over white communities now existing within Indian reservations.

In 1786, prior to the adoption of the United States Constitution, a dispute existed between New York and Massachusetts over the sovereignty to be exercised in the lands of the Seneca Nation of Indians, which included the present Allegany Reservation. It was settled by granting sovereignty to New York, with certain nonsovereign rights remaining in Massachusetts. (Blacksmith v. Fellows, 7 N. Y. 401.) In 1794 the United States and the Six Nations entered into a treaty. Title to the lands within the Allegany Reservation was acknowledged by the United States to vest in the Seneca Nation.

As the State grew in population, white persons settled within the Reservation. Railroads were built over its territory. Villages with white population were established. Leases were made between the Indian authorities and white occupants of the [347]*347land. In 1848 the Seneca Nation, in convention at the Council House on the Cattaraugus Reservation, adopted a constitution. It asked the aid of the United States and of the State of New York in providing laws for its domestic government. The Legislature in March, 1849, assented to the request. ‘‘ From then on, at different times numerous laws for their civil government and regulation of their internal affairs were passed ” by the New York Legislature. (United States v. Waldow, 294 Fed. III, 115.)

In 1875 Congress authorized the Seneca Nation to lease lands in certain areas of the Allegany Reservation. (Act of Feb. 19, 1875; 18 U. S. Stat.

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Related

United States Ex Rel. Kennedy v. Tyler
269 U.S. 13 (Supreme Court, 1925)
United States v. City of Salamanca
27 F. Supp. 541 (W.D. New York, 1939)
Blacksmith v. . Fellows
7 N.Y. 401 (New York Court of Appeals, 1852)
Patterson v. Council of the Seneca Nation
157 N.E. 734 (New York Court of Appeals, 1927)
Benson v. United States
44 F. 178 (U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Northern New York, 1890)

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Bluebook (online)
179 Misc. 343, 39 N.Y.S.2d 119, 1943 N.Y. Misc. LEXIS 1514, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/public-service-commission-v-edwards-motor-transit-co-nysupct-1943.