Sproles Motor Freight Lines, Inc. v. Railroad Commission

157 S.W.2d 949, 1941 Tex. App. LEXIS 1064
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 11, 1941
DocketNo. 11290
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 157 S.W.2d 949 (Sproles Motor Freight Lines, Inc. v. Railroad Commission) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sproles Motor Freight Lines, Inc. v. Railroad Commission, 157 S.W.2d 949, 1941 Tex. App. LEXIS 1064 (Tex. Ct. App. 1941).

Opinion

GRAVES, Justice.

This suit was instituted by various Texas common motor-carriers, various Texas Railroads, and the Railway Express Agency, Inc., the appellants herein, as a direct attack against an order of the Railroad Commission of Texas, dated November 22, 1939, granting its common-carrier motor-carrier certificate No. 3063 to Eli Morgan, qne of the appellees herein, authorizing the operation of a common-carrier service to and between places named in such order, that is:

“From Dallas, Texas, to Rhome via State Highway No. 114, from Rhome to Bowie via State Highway No. 2, United States Highway No. 81, Bowie to Henrietta via State Highway No. 50, Henrietta to Amarillo via State Highway No. 5, United States Highway No. 370; from Wichita Falls to Burkburnett via State Highway No. 30, Wichita Falls to Byers via State Highway No. 66, State Highway No. 79; Wichita Falls to Olney via State Highway No. 79; Olney to Decatur via State Highway No. 24; Breckenridge to Dublin via State Highway Nos. 67 and 187, and United States Highway No. 80; Grapevine to Abilene via State Highway No. 121 to Fort Worth, thence to Cisco via United States Highway No. 80, and Breckenridge to Abilene via United States Highway No. 80-A; from Abilene to Bal-linger via State Highway No. 4; from Fort Worth to Stephenville via United States Highway No. 377; thence to San Angelo via United States Highway No. 67; from Coleman to Rising Star via State Highway No. 206, and from Cisco to Brownwood via. State Highway No. 23, United States Highway No. 283”; also to set aside and annul the common-carrier certificate issued to Eli Morgan under that order, as well as to enjoin and restrain any and all operations under the order.

The trial of the case was on its merits before the court, without the intervention of a jury, on the 19th day of February, 1941, and on that day judgment was rendered against appellants, affirming and sustaining the Commission’s order of November 22 of 1939, to which action of the court the appellants in open court excepted and gave notice of appeal.

The only question of law posed for this court on the review is, did the District Court of Travis County err in deciding that the Railroad Commission had been justified in so granting the appellee this certificate on November 22, 1939?

That single inquiry is simplified by reference to prior relations between these parties leading up to the authorization of the certificate; this was the appellee’s second request for a hearing on his application for it, as against these appellants, his first one having been denied by a tentative order of the Commission on October 4 of 1938, these appellants being then the protestants thereof, as thereafter they likewise were against this one; on November 1 of 1938, the Commission granted appel-lee’s motion for a rehearing of that first denial of such a certificate to him, giving him opportunity to present further evidence before that Body on his application therefor, whereupon appellants sued him in the district court of Travis County, seeking to set aside as wholly void the Commission’s order granting that rehearing, as well as to restrain it from exercising any further jurisdiction over his application therefor, or from issuing any orders or certificates in connection therewith. The result of that litigation is re[951]*951ported in Sproles Motor Freight Line v. Smith, Tex.Civ.App., 130 S.W.2d 1087, 1088, writ of error denied.

That decision, thus having the approval of the Supreme Court, is the law of this case, except as to whether or not the later hearing so resulting in the granting of this certificate on November 22 of 1939 was held in compliance with the rules of law there laid down. It ended with this declaration: “ * * * we must assume that the Railroad Commission, in accordance with its order granting the motion for rehearing, will, in keeping with these decisions, set same down for further hearing at a designated date, and notify the interested parties accordingly.”

This record discloses that the Commission did fully comply with that direction, and, after granting the appellee such a rehearing, set his new application down for a designated date, giving advance notice thereof to both sides here; that it then heard in evidence all matters either desired to present, following which the order now at bar was entered.

So that, there is nothing before this court, except to determine whether or not the record of this last rehearing justified the Commission in granting the certificate this time, upon its many stated findings, a controlling one of which was that changed conditions since the refusal of the former permit had made that both permissible and advisable.

Despite appellants’ reiterated contention that the order and its entailed certificate were “illegal and void” because there was no evidence of any such changed conditions, or other justification for its action, and that the Commission, in determining otherwise, considered records, files, and other matters of fact not in evidence before it, this court is unable to so read the statement of facts; on the contrary, the undisputed testimony of the witness Woodruff alone, introduced at this last hearing, was to the effect that most of the highways enumerated supra, over which the appellee would have to travel under his permit, had been, since October 4, 1938, not only rebuilt, but highly improved, especially during the few months next preceding such final hearing; and, further, to the effect that, as to the portion of the roads that had not already been so treated, contracts had been let for the improvement of them, and, when that work had been completed, as therein provided for, these roads also would, within a short period, be put into like first-class condition.

Not only so, but the most applicable statutes, R.S.Articles 911b, sections 8 and 9, Vernon’s Ann.Civ.St. art. 911b, §§ 8, 9, expressly confer upon the Commission the right to also inquire into the financial ability of the applicant for such a certificate as this one, as well as the condition of the roads over which the service is to be rendered, the necessity for it, and all other matters shown to-be germane to that inquiry.

Wherefore, on this phase of the controversy, it may be conceded that had there been no evidence that conditions had in any way changed between the dates of the refusal of the first certificate and the granting of the second, the Commission would have been without authority of law to grant the latter. It follows, too, it is thought, that the array of authorities from other jurisdictions, cited and relied upon by the appellants in support of their propositions asserting such to be the law, became academic when undertaken to be applied to the state of facts so obtaining here; this for the reason that our statutes on this subject are not only of a distinctive and different character from the ones applied in those cases, but have been so ruled upon with direct application to this very case.

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Bluebook (online)
157 S.W.2d 949, 1941 Tex. App. LEXIS 1064, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/sproles-motor-freight-lines-inc-v-railroad-commission-texapp-1941.