Source: http://masscases.com/cases/sjc/260/260mass335.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 12:32:27+00:00

Document:
IRENE VIGEANT vs. POSTAL TELEGRAPH CABLE COMPANY.
This court takes judicial notice of the facts within common knowledge that electric light, heat and power companies and telephone companies and street railway companies maintain poles, wires and apparatus within, upon and under public ways in the Commonwealth and that all such companies maintain poles bearing wires charged with electricity in varying degree, some carrying a much more powerful current than do the wires of a telegraph company.
G. L. c. 166, s. 42, valid and constitutional when enacted in 1851 and at a time when the telegraph was the only known instrumentality for transmitting intelligence by electricity or for transmitting electricity at all, since the advent of electric light, heat and power, telephone, and street railway companies, has become so unequal and unreasonable in its classification and operation as to be unconstitutional and void.
A corporation may invoke the guaranty of equal protection of the laws assured by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Questions which merely lurk in a record, neither brought to the attention of the court nor ruled upon, are not to be considered as having been so decided as to constitute precedents.
TORT. Writ in the District Court of Lowell dated October 22, 1925.
Material facts at the trial in the District Court are stated in the opinion. The judge found for the plaintiff in the sum of $1,500 and reported the action to the Appellate Division for the Northern District. The report was ordered dismissed. The defendant appealed.
G. K. Gardner, (R. A. Cutter with him,) for the defendant.
F. S. Harvey, for the plaintiff, submitted a brief.
plaintiff and the driver of the automobile in which she was riding were found to have been in the exercise of due care. No contention was made in the trial court or in the argument at the bar of this court that the defendant was negligent. Its liability was found and is now conceded to rest exclusively on G. L. c. 166, s. 42. The pertinent words of that section are, "A telegraph company shall be liable in damages to the person injured in his person or property by the poles, wires or other apparatus of such company." That statutory mandate imposes an absolute liability on a telegraph company irrespective of negligence. See Duggan v. Bay State Street Railway, 230 Mass. 370, 381, 382, and cases cited; New York Central Railroad v. White, 243 U. S. 188, 198, 204, and cases cited; Opinion of the Justices, 251 Mass. 569, 601.
The single contention here urged in behalf of the defendant is that the statute deprives it of the equal protection of the laws. That contention is based on the ground that the statute subjects the defendant and other telegraph companies to unconditional liability, regardless of their due care in the erection and maintenance of their poles, wires or other apparatus and without reference to their fault, and that no such liability is imposed upon telephone companies, or electric light or power companies, or street railway companies, and that the liability of such other companies is left to be ascertained solely by reference to the common law. This, it is argued, creates undue discrimination against telegraph companies and unequal favoritism toward other companies of like general nature.
The court takes judicial notice of the facts within common knowledge that electric light, heat and power companies and telephone companies and street railway companies maintain poles, wires and apparatus within, upon and under public ways in the Commonwealth. All such companies maintain poles bearing wires charged with electricity in varying degree, some carrying a much more powerful current than do the wires of a telegraph company. State v. Consumers Power Co. 119 Minn. 225, 232. Commonwealth v. Pear, 183 Mass. 242, 245. Delano v. Smith, 206 Mass. 365, 371. Roosen v. Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, 235 Mass. 66, 70.
Foley v. Boston & Maine Railroad, 193 Mass. 332, 334. Greene v. Mayor of Fitchburg, 219 Mass. 121, 125. Chartier v. Barre Wool Combing Co. Ltd. 229 Mass. 153, 156. MacGilvray v. Boston Elevated Railway, 229 Mass. 65, 67. Boston .v. Treasurer & Receiver General, 237 Mass. 403, 416. Barrows v. Farnum's Stage Lines, Inc. 254 Mass. 240, 247. Lincoln Gas & Electric Light Co. v. Lincoln, 250 U. S. 256, 268. Block v. Hirsh, 256 U. S. 135, 154. Newton v. Consolidated Gas Co. of New York, 258 U. S. 165, 174. Chastleton Corp. v. Sinclair, 264 U. S. 543, 548, 549.
Such other companies enjoy substantially the same privileges in the public ways as do telegraph companies. G. L. c. 166, s.s. 21-43, both inclusive. Telegraph companies alone are made liable without fault for injuries resulting to others from their structures under s. 42, here in question. All other such companies are excluded from its operation. It has been held that said s. 42 is not applicable to electric light companies. Hector v. Boston Electric Light Co. 161 Mass. 558, 570. Illingsworth v. Boston Electric Light Co. 161 Mass. 583, 585. See as to a street railway, Curran v. Boston Elevated Railway, 249 Mass. 55, 58. The question does not appear to have arisen as to telephone companies or specifically as to electric heat or power companies.
the equal protection clause, and in others statutes have been refused enforcement. Cockrill v. California, 268 U. S. 258, 262. Jones v. Union Guano Co. Inc. 264 U. S. 171, 181. They need not be reviewed. The principles do not change. The statutes brought under review are of great variety.
by electricity or otherwise, or transmitting electricity for lighting, heating or power. Indeed, G. L. c. 166 is entitled, "Telephone and Telegraph Companies, and Lines for the Transmission of Electricity." It includes, also, in some particulars street railway companies and electric railroads. There may be other particulars of the activities of these companies which may justify statutes confined in operation to one or another or more of them.
The provisions of said s. 42 first appeared in St. 1851, c. 247, s. 2. When enacted, its constitutionality was beyond question. At that time the telegraph was the only known instrumentality for transmitting intelligence by electricity or for transmitting electricity at all. Since that time inventive genius has placed other instrumentalities in the Same general category as the electric telegraph as to the use of poles, wires and apparatus. A law, valid in its operation when applicable to only one instrumentality, has become unequal in its operation because the ingenuity of the human mind has added to science and industry other instrumentalities falling within the same general classification as to material construction and support of structures in public ways and the use of electricity as a main agency. The statute as drawn was specifically directed to the conditions existing at that time. It was rigid, not flexible in terms. It was not framed to broaden in its scope with changing conditions. It has become too narrow because of the advance in the art of transmitting intelligence and electricity.
merous other statutes may become inoperative because of the enactment by Congress of some statute within a field in which it is supreme under the Constitution, although until Congress acts that field may be open to legislation by the several States. Commonwealth v. Nickerson, 236 Mass. 2811 292, 296, 302-305, and cases there collected. A change in economic conditions may render void a statute valid at its enactment. Chastleton Corp. v. Sinclair, 264 U. S. 543.
The defendant, although a corporation, may invoke the guaranty of equal protection of the laws assured by the Fourteenth Amendment. Smyth v. Ames, 169 U. S. 466, 522. Essex v. New England Telegraph Co. of Massachusetts, 239 U. S. 313.
Waste Co. 239 Mass. 540, 544. Louisville Trust Co. v. Knott, 191 U. S. 225. Swan v. Justices of the Superior Court, 222 Mass. 542, 545. Gibson v. Soper, 6 Gray 279, 284. Kennedy v. Commissioner of Corporations & Taxation, 256 Mass. 426. Of such a decision the most that can be said is that the point was in the case "if anyone had seen fit to raise it. Questions which merely lurk in the record, neither brought to the attention of the court nor ruled upon, are not to be considered as having been so decided as to constitute precedents. See New v. Oklahoma, 195 U. S. 252, 256; Teffit, Welter & Co. v. Munsuri, 222 U. S. 114, 119; United States v. More, 3 Cr. 159, 172; The Edward, I Wheat. 261, 275-276." Webster v. Fall, 266 U.S. 507, 511. United States v. Mitchell, 271 U.S. 9, 14.
It follows from what has been said that the request of the defendant, to the effect that G. L. c. 166, s. 42, denies to the defendant equal protection of the laws, was sound in law and pertinent to the facts, and that for the same reason there was error in ruling that the plaintiff, if in the exercise of due care, was entitled to recover without regard to the negligence of the defendant. Since, in the trial court, counsel for the plaintiff conceded that he did not rely on the negligence of the defendant, there is no occasion for another trial. G. L. c. 231, 124. Loanes v. Gast, 216 Mass. 197, 199.
Judgment to be entered for defendant.

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