State Railroad Commission v. People

44 Colo. 345
CourtSupreme Court of Colorado
DecidedApril 15, 1908
DocketNo. 6307
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 44 Colo. 345 (State Railroad Commission v. People) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Colorado primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State Railroad Commission v. People, 44 Colo. 345 (Colo. 1908).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Campbell

delivered the opinion of the court:

[346]*346The general assembly, at its sixteenth session, adopted, and the governor' approved, an act to regulate common carriers, to create a state railroad commission, and prescribe and define its duties. A proviso to the first section excepts from the provisions of the act “mountain railroads operating less than twenty miles of road, the principal traffic of which is the hauling of mineral from, and supplies to, mines.”

The eleventh section creates a commission to be known as the “state railroad commission,” to which is given authority, and on which is imposed the duty, to inquire into the management of the business' of all common carriers subject to the provisions' of the act, and to. execute and enforce the same; it has other powers not necessary here to mention, the exercise of which involves discretion and judgment, and after notice and a hearing on evidence, it may make orders which, in a certain contingency, become binding. — Sess. Laws 1907, pp. 531, 545.

In pursuance of the authority conferred upon the governor by the act, he appointed, as members of this commission, Frederick J. Chamberlin, Bulkeley Wells, and Halsted Eitter, who proceeded to organize and in all respects to comply with the provisions of the act whereby they became, as they claim, a duly and legally constituted state railroad commission for the purpose of exercising the powers and performing the duties which the statute devolved upon it.

After the commission organized, but before it had taken other action, the plaintiffs, railroad corporations organized and doing business as common carriers within this state — the district attorney, upon their demand, having refused to bring such an action upon his own relation — themselves as relators brought this action under the provisions of chapter [347]*34727 of the Code against the railroad 'commission and its members, to try their title to the office which the complaint says they have usurped and are unlawfully holding, and, as relief, prayed that they be ousted from such office and enjoined from exercising the duties thereof.

Before the cause was brought to an issue, certain other railroad corporations doing business as common carriers in this state, filed their petition of intervention containing averments similar to those in the complaint, and asked to be made plaintiffs in the action, and, against the objection of defendants, such permission was given by the court. They also asked for a temporary writ of injunction to restrain the commission from acting; but that feature, while it might be significant in its bearing on some question not here mooted, is not now important.-

The sole ground upon which the original and intervening relators rely in support of their allegation that respondents have usurped a public office, is, that the proviso of section 1 above quoted renders the entire act absolutely void, in that' it unjustly discriminates between common carriers, arbitrarily including some and excluding others of the same class, the plaintiffs being carriers who are included, and that thereby their rights under the state and federal constitutions have been violated.

. To the original complaint respondents demurred, on the ground that relators have not the legal capacity to sue, and that the complaint does not. state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. To the petition or complaint of intervention respondents demurred, for the same and other reasons. These demurrers were overruled by the court and, respondents electing to stand thereby, the court entered judgment upon the complaint and petition of intervention, ousting and excluding the individual [348]*348respondents from the office of railroad commissioner, and preventing them from acting as a railroad commission. From that judgment, respondents sued out this wfit of error.

From the abstract of record, it does not appear that, after the refusal of the district attorney to bring an action, the plaintiffs asked leave of the district court, or that the court was asked or given an opportunity to grant leave' to them to institute or prosecute this action. While, in the demurrer to the petition of intervention, but not to the original complaint, the question of the court’s jurisdiction was raised and the right disputed of private persons, purely for the protection’ of their private rights, to maintain an action which primarily and properly is maintainable only by the state in its sovereign capacity and for the protection of the public interests, the attorney general, at the oral argument on this review, stated that he conceded below, and does here, that plaintiffs might properly maintain this action, and that the courts have jurisdiction to grant the particular relief prayed; in 'other words, that private individuals or •corporations, solely for the protection of their own private rights, may, as relators, institute and maintain an action under chapter 27 of the Code, which, in all substantial respects, is like an information in the nature of quo warranto at common law, and have as relief a judgment which .effectually prevents a state board, charged with such duties as are devolved upon the railroad commission by this act, from carrying out and enforcing the laws of the state; and that, too, in the first instance, and in advance of any action whatever by the board in any way injuriously affecting their private rights.

Under chapter 27 of. the Code, the action for trying title to a public office or franchise “is a substitute for the original common-law quo warranto [349]*349remedy. It prescribes an enlarged proceeding, substantially by information in tbe nature of quo warranto, and furnishes the exclusive method, so far as district courts are concerned, for investigating usurpations of office.”—People ex rel. v. Londoner, 13 Colo. 303, 314.

Section 1 of that -chapter authorizes the district attorney, in the name of the people, upon his own information or upon the relation of a private party, to bring the action against any person who usurps any public office or franchise; and it is made the duty of the district attorney, whenever he has reason to believe that such office or franchise has been usurped, or when he is directed to do so by the governor; and, in case the district attorney refuses to bring the action on the complaint of a private party, such action may be brought by such private- party upon his own relation in the name of the people. The act also provides that, in a statement of the cause of action by the district attorney, he may set forth in his complaint the name of the person rightly entitled to the office; and the court, in a proper case, may adjudicate his title thereto, as well as that of the incumbent. These provisions, however, which give permission to a private party to bring the action and also to have the right- of one other than the incumbent adjudicated, do not turn the proceeding from one to protect the public interests into one to safeguard the purely private rights of the relator.

In the Londoner case, supra, the relator, Barton, and Londoner, respondent, were opposing candidates for Mayor of Denver, and, on the face of the returns, Londoner was declared elected. Barton, thereupon, as' relator, brought an action under this chapter of the Code, to try Londoner’s title, as well as his own, to the office, asserting in his complaint that the prima facie result of the election was brought about by the [350]

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Bluebook (online)
44 Colo. 345, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-railroad-commission-v-people-colo-1908.