The New York herald., 1877-09-19
Rapid Transft-The Court of Appeals
Strikes Down All Legal Obstacles.


We congratulate the city on the decisions
rendered yesterday by the Court of Appeals.
| The Judgment in these cases of that appel
late tribunal, which finally decides all con-
troversies arising under our State constitu-
tion and laws, has been awaited with great
interest and some impatience, although, for
our part, we have never had doubt as to
what the decision of the Court of Appeals
would be. The time which has been taken
to reach it betokens the caution and delioera-
ton with which the Court has acted in what
all must regard as question OF the hrst
magnitude. The Judgment of our highest
State tribunal will be received with more
respect in consequence OF the care and
pains which have been bestowed on the
| subject, and even those who are most prone
to contemn it, as being most hurt by it
even the horse car companies, which left no
stone unturned to defeat rapid transit
must admit that the decision is law; that
it knocks the last prop from their desperate
opposition that, in short, it ''settles their
hash"
The selfish and audacious war against
rapid transit which has been wa9ed so
Ihany years is at last ended The obstruc-
tions which have hedged the progress OF
rapid transit in the shape of incessant in
functions issued by courts of inferior juris-
dction are completely swept away by the
judgment of the court of last resort,
since no court can hereafter find the
shadow of legal pretence for issuing
mandates in the interest of the OBJ
structionists The money which has been
so profusely spent by the horse car compa-
MES to influence legislation at Albany may
be charged at once to the account of profit
and loss on the adverse side of that account
Those New York members of the Legislature
who sold themselves to the horse car COM
panies and outraged their constituents may
make the most of what they have
got and congratulate themselves that
they ''made hay while the sun shined )" for
no harvest from that source will again be
reaped by them or by emulous successors.
The Court of Appeals has decided that the
Rapid Transit act of 1875 is constitutional;
that the charters of previously existing COM
panes are not invalidated either by that act
or by the constitutional amendment on
which it is founded; that the notifications
of their plans of construction which they
accepted in accordance with the action of
the Rapid Transit Commission do not i'm
pair their legal rights, that they are at full
liberty to go on and complete their roads in
accordance with the modified plans, and
that they are under no necessity
of obtaining the consent of property
holders to use the streets for purpose
sane toned by the Legislature before the
constitutional amendment was adopted.
That amendment does not impair vested
rights previously acquired. Whatever pre-
existing companies that had not forfeited
their charters had right to do, without
the consent of property holders along
the line of their routes before the
constitution was amended, they have
an equal right to do now without
such consent. The Rapid Transit act ex-
pressly conferred upon such existing COM
panes rs had not forfeited their charters
the right to construct rapid transit
roads on the same routes designated
by the commissioners, when such
routes happened to coincide with their
own, and to build them on the same plan
decided on by the commissioners. Such
modification of plan does not in any way
impair the pre-existing right to build road
on the route of the company. The consti-
tutional amendment prohibits the Legisla-
ture from passing any private or local act
for laying down railroad tracks; but the
Legislature did not grant to the Gilbert
Company the right to lay down tracks, for it
already possessed that right. 1t merely au-
thorized the company to so change it's mode
of structure as to bring it into conformity
with the general law. The right to lay down
railroad tracks was already possessed by
the Gilbert Company; no act of the Legisla-
ture could either confer it or take it away;
the Legislature, therefore, in permitting the
company to change the mode of building its
road did not violate that provision Of the
State constitution which forbids local laws
for laying down railroad tracks. The right
to Law down tracks was vested interest
which even the amending power could not
touch, and there is nothing in the amended
constitution which restraints the Legislature
from permitting the company to relinquish
its own plan of building and accept another
more in accordance with the general law.
The modification of plan is not in conflict
with, but in pursuance OF, the plain in
tention of the amendment. The amendment
contemplates uniformity. 1t could not
enforce uniformity against existing char
tered rights but when the possessors of
those rights consented to surrender q part
of them as a voluntary concession to the
spirit of the new amendment it was pre-
posterous to contend that such a concession
worked forfeiture of their right to con-
etruct n rapid transit railway That RIGHT