Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/223/70
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 09:04:56+00:00

Document:
The complaint averred that although prepayment of freight had been tendered and every shipping regulation complied with, the railroad company had refused to accept for carriage from Evansville, Indiana, to stations on the line of its railway in the state of Kentucky, beer in kegs and cases, consigned to points which were 'local-option' or 'dry' localities under the law of Kentucky, and had notified complainant and the public that it would discontinue receiving consignments of beer or other liquors for points in the state of Kentucky where the local-option law of that state was in operation. The prayer of the bill was that the railroad company be enjoined from so refusing to accept the product of the brewing company for transportation from Evansville to such local-option points in Kentucky.
A preliminary injunction was issued as prayed. Thereupon the defendant removed the case to the circuit court of the United States, upon the ground that there was diversity of citizenship, and also because the case involved questions arising under the Constitution and laws of the United States; namely, the validity of the law of Kentucky, prohibiting the transportation and delivery of liquors to points in that state where the sale was prohibited, and also as a case arising under the act of Congress regulating interstate commerce of February 4, 1887 24 Stat. at L. 379, chap. 104, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3154, as amended June 29, 1906 34 Stat. at L. 584, chap. 3591, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1909, p. 1149. An answer was then filed and the cause heard upon bill and answer, with the result that the preliminary injunction allowed by the state court was made permanent, and the railroad company enjoined from refusing to receive and carry beer from Evansville to any point upon its line of road in the state of Kentucky, wet or dry. An appeal by the railroad company to the circuit court of appeals resulted in an affirmance of the order of the circuit court. For the opinion see 172 Fed. 117.
Messrs.Henry L. Stone, Philip W. Frey, and George R. DeBruler for appellant.
Mr. George A. Cunningham for appellee.
2. The objection that there was an adequate remedy at law, assuming that the subject is one for any tribunal other than the Interstate Commerce Commission, comes too late, if ever available, the objection being now made for the first time, so far as is discoverable from the record. The announced purpose of the railroad company to abjure its function and duty as a common carrier in respect of interstate shipments of all intoxicating liquors to localities in the state of Kentucky where the Kentucky local-option prohibition laws prevailed threatened the ruin of complainant's business, and relief by injunction against such a continued course of conduct was certainly one which in such circumstances might be granted. Where the case is one in which, under any circumstances, relief in equity may be admissible, it is too late to say that there was an adequate remedy at law only upon review proceedings. Kilbourn v. Sunderland, 130 U. S. 505, 32 L. ed. 1005, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 594.
3. The case was heard upon bill and answer. The defense is based solely upon the terms of the Kentucky act of March 21, 1906, now § 2569a, Carroll's Kentucky Statutes of 1909, entitled an act 'to Regulate the Carrying, Moving, Delivery, Transferring or Distribution of Intoxicating Liquors in Local-option Districts.' By that act it is made unlawful for any common carrier to transport beer or any intoxicating liquor to any consignee in any locality within the state where the sale of such liquors has been prohibited by vote of the people under the local-option law of the state. A violation of the law subjects the offender to a fine of not less than fifty nor more than one hundred dollars for each offense.
Upon the assumption that this legislation effectively prohibited both state and interstate transportation of such commodities within the state, the railroad company notified all of its agents, in and out of the state, to refuse to receive such liquors when consigned to any local-option point. This notification was by a printed circular letter, which set out the full text of the act, and gave a full list of all such local-option points. In express terms this notification applied to both inter and intrastate shipments; and, it is averred, this circular was filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission. It is not, however, averred that the Commission either took any action thereon, or that it was asked to take any action.
The legality of the attitude of the railroad company toward interstate shipments of intoxicating liquors to local-option points in Kentucky must turn upon the validity of that legislation as applied to interstate shipments.
The Wilson act (26 Stat. at L. 313, chap. 728, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3177), which subjects such liquors to state regulation, although still in the original packages, does not apply before actual delivery to such consignee, where the shipment is interstate. Some of the many later cases in which these matters have been so determined and the Wilson act construed are: Rhodes v. Iowa, 170 U. S. 412, 42 L. ed. 1088, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 664; Vance v. W. A. Vandercook Co. 170 U. S. 438, 42 L. ed. 1100, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 674; Heyman v. Southern R. Co. 203 U. S. 270, 51 L. ed. 178, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 104, 7 A. & E. Ann. Cas. 1130; Adams Exp. Co. v. Kentucky, 214 U. S. 218, 53 L. ed. 972, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 633.
Valid as the Kentucky legislation undoubtedly was as a regulation in respect to intrastate shipments of such articles, it was most obviously never an effective enactment in so far as it undertook to regulate interstate shipments to dry points. Pending this very litigation, the Kentucky court of appeals, upon the authority of the line of cases above cited, reached the same conclusion. Cincinnati, N. O. & T. P. R. Co. v. Com. 126 Ky. 563, 104 S. W. 394.
The obligation of the railroad company to conform to the requirements of the Kentucky law, so far as that law prohibited intrastate shipments, is clear, and to this extent its circular notification was commendable. But the duty of this company, as an interstate common carrier for hire, to receive for transportation to consignees upon its line in Kentucky from consignors in other states, any commodity which is an ordinary subject of interstate commerce and such transportation, could not be prohibited by any law of the state of such consignee, inasmuch as any such law would be an unlawful regulation of interstate commerce, not authorized by the police power of the state. It is obvious, therefore, that in so far as the Kentucky statute was an illegal regulation of interstate commerce, it neither imposed an obligation to obey, nor affords an excuse for refusal to perform the general duty of the railroad company as a common carrier of freight.
Why should the brewing company have made complaint to the Commission? What relief could it afford? There was no tariff question. There was no discrimination against shipments tendered by complainant and like shipments tendered by other brewers to the same points. There was no claim that the commodities tendered were inherently dangerous to transport, or that the railroad company did not have transportation facilities. Evansville was not discriminated against in favor of like shipments to the same points. To say that there was a discrimination between shipments of intoxicants and other commodities does not make a case of discrimination or preference where the denial of such shipments is based, as is the case here, wholly and solely upon an illegal restraint upon that kind of interstate commerce, is to reason in a circle, for the question comes back at last to the validity of the law forbidding such shipments. There was no discrimination if the law was valid, and the result must turn not upon any administrative question or questions of fact within the scope of the power of the Commission, but upon the validity of the legislation which controlled the action of the carrier. That is a question of general law, for a judicial tribunal, and one not competent for the Commission as a purely administrative body.
The decision in the case of Texas & P. R. Co. v. Abilene Cotton Oil Co. 204 U. S. 426, 51 L. ed. 553, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 350, 9 A. & E. Ann. Cas. 1075, is not applicable here. The question there was one of the reasonableness of a rate. Such a question is primarily one of administrative character, and the propriety of a prior resort to the Commission to obtain a ruling upon the question of reasonableness involved the very heart of the whole statute. That there might be uniformity in rate-making necessarily required a resort to that body as a basis for a common-law recovery of an excessive charge.
The result is that the decree of the court below must be affirmed.
UNITED STATES and Interstate Commerce Commission, Appts., v. PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD COMPANY. UNITED STATES, Interstate Commerce Commission, and Crew-Levick Company, Appts., v. PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD COMPANY.

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