Source: https://openjurist.org/220/us/61
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 18:01:36+00:00

Document:
NATURAL CARBONIC GAS COMPANY, William S. Jackson, Attorney General of the State of New York, et al.
Argued January 3 and 4, 1911.
By a bill in equity exhibited in the circuit court, the appellant, as owner and holder of capital stock and bonds of the Natural Carbonic Gas Company, sought a decree enjoining that company from obeying, and the other defendants from enforcing, a statute of the state of New York, approved May 20, 1908, entitled, 'An Act for the Protection of the Natural Mineral Springs of the State, and to Prevent Waste and Impairment of Its Natural Mineral Waters,' and containing, among others, this provision: 'Pumping, or otherwise drawing by artificial appliance, from any well made by boring or drilling into the rock, that class of mineral waters holding in solution natural mineral salts and an excess of carbonic acid gas, or pumping, or by any artificial contrivance whatsoever in any manner producing, an unnatural flow of carbonic acid gas issuing from or contained in any well made by boring or drilling into the rock, for the purpose of extracting, collecting, compressing, liquifying, or vending such gas as a commodity otherwise than in connection with the mineral water and the other mineral ingredients with which it was associated, is hereby declared to be unlawful.' Laws 1908, vol. 2, chap. 429, p. 1221.
It also is alleged that the gas company bottles and sells for drinking purposes and for use by invalids and others all of the mineral waters pumped from its wells 'for which there is any market or demand,' but there is no allegation of the extent of this market or demand, and it was conceded in argument that a large proportion of the waters pumped from the company's wells is not used, but is suffered to run to waste.
Messrs. Nash Rockwood, Charles C. Lester, and Edward R. O'Malley for appellees.
The statute against whose enforcement the suit is directed contains several restrictive provisions more or less directly connected with the purpose suggested by its title, but we are concerned with only the one before set forth, because the court of appeals of the state has pronounced the others invalid, and counsel have treated them as thereby eliminated from the statute and from present consideration.
Coming to the provision in question, it is necessary to inquire what construction has been put upon it by the highest court of the state, for that construction must be accepted by the courts of the United States, and be regarded by them as a part of the provision when they are called upon to determine whether it violates any right secured by the Federal Constitution. Weightman v. Clark, 103 U. S. 256, 260, 26 L. ed. 392, 393; Morley v. Lake Shore & M. S. R. Co. 146 U. S. 162, 166, 36 L. ed. 925, 928, 13 Sup. Ct. Rep. 54; Olsen v. Smith, 195 U. S. 333, 342, 49 L. ed. 224, 229, 25 Sup. Ct. Rep. 52. The court of appeals of the state had the statute before it in Hathorn v. Natural Carbonic Gas Co. 194 N. Y. 326, 23 L.R.A.(N.S.) 436, 128 Am. St. Rep. 555, 87 N. E. 504, 16 A. & E. Ann. Cas. 989, and again in People v. New York Carbonic Acid Gas Co. 196 N. Y. 421, 90 N. E. 441, and the elaborate opinions then rendered disclose that the court, having regard to the title of the act and to the doctrine of correlative rights in percolating waters which prevails in that state, as recognized in Forbell v. New York, 164 N. Y. 522, 51 L.R.A. 695, 79 Am. St. Rep. 666, 58 N. E. 644, construed this provision, not as prohibiting the specified acts absolutely or unqualifiedly, but only when the mineral waters are drawn from a source of supply not confined to the lands of the actor, but extending into or through the lands of others, and then only when the draft made upon that source of supply is unreasonable or wasteful, considering that there is a coequal right in all the surface owners to draw upon it. In other words, the court, by processes of interpretation having its approval, read into the provision an exception or qualification making it inapplicable where the waters are not drawn from a common source of supply, and also where, if they be drawn from such a source, no injury is done thereby to others having a like right to resort to it.
If the statute there assailed did not work a deprivation of property without due process of law, it is difficult to perceive that there is any such deprivation in the present case. The mineral waters and carbonic acid gas exist in a commingled state in the underlying rock, and neither can be drawn out without the other. They are of value in their commingled form and also when separated, but the greater demand is for the gas alone. Influenced by this demand, some surface owners, having wells bored or drilled into the rock, engage in extensive pumping operations for the purpose of collecting the gas and vending it as a separate commodity. Uusually where this is done an undue proportion of the commingled waters and gas is taken from the common supply, and a large, if not the larger, portion of the waters from which the gas is collected is permitted to run to waste. Thus these pumping operations generally result in an unreasonable and wasteful depletion of the common supply and in a corresponding injury to others equally entitled to resort to it. It is to correct this evil that the statute was adopted, and the remedy which it applies is an enforced discontinuance of the excessive and wasteful features of the pumping. It does not take from any surface owner the right to tap the underlying rock and to draw from the common supply, but, consistently with the continued existence of that right, so regulates its exercise as reasonably to conserve the interests of all who possess it. That the state, consistently with due process of law, may do this, is a necessary conclusion from the decision in the case cited. But were the question an open one, we still should solve it in the same way.
We do not overlook the statement in appellant's brief that the mineral waters reached by the gas company's wells do not exist in any underground reservoir, and do not come from any common source, but we cannot give it any effect. It is contrary to what the courts of the state apparently regard as the real situation at Saratoga Springs, and is without support in the present record. While the bill alleges that the waters are percolating waters, not naturally flowing to or upon the surface, that description of them is not inconsistent with their existence in a natural reservoir of porous rock underlying the lands of several owners. Besides, if we accepted it as true that they do not constitute a common source of supply, that is, one to which other surface owners have an equal right to resort, it then would have to be held that the gas company's acts are not within the prohibition of the statute, as construed by the court of appeals of the state, and therefore that the appellant, as owner and holder of capital stock and bonds of the company, is not harmed by the statute, and is not entitled to draw in question or test its validity. Clark v. Kansas City, 176 U. S. 114, 118, 44 L. ed. 392, 396, 20 Sup. Ct. Rep. 284; Tyler v. Registration Ct. Judges, 179 U. S. 405, 45 L. ed. 252, 21 Sup. Ct. Rep. 206; Turpin v. Lemon, 187 U. S. 51, 60, 47 L. ed. 70, 74, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 20; New York ex rel. Hatch v. Reardon, 204 U. S. 152, 160, 51 L. ed. 415, 422, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 188, 9 A. & E. Ann. Cas. 736.
The rules by which this contention must be tested, as is shown by repeated decisions of this court, are these: 1. The equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment does not take from the state the power to classify in the adoption of police laws, but admits of the exercise of a wide scope of discretion in that regard, and avoids what is done only when it is without any reasonable basis, and therefore is purely arbitrary. 2. A classification having some reasonable basis does not offend against that clause merely because it is not made with mathematical nicety, or because in practice it results in some inequality. 3. When the classification in such a law is called in question, if any state of facts reasonably can be conceived that would sustain it, the existence of that state of facts at the time the law was enacted must be assumed. 4. One who assails the classification in such a law must carry the burden of showing that it does not rest upon any reasonable basis, but is essentially arbitrary. Bachtel v. Wilson, 204 U. S. 36, 41, 51 L. ed. 357, 359, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 243; Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Melton, 218 U. S. 36, 54 L. ed. 921, 30 Sup. Ct. Rep. 676; Ozan Lumber Co. v. Union County Nat. Bank, 207 U. S. 251, 256, 52 L. ed. 195, 197, 28 Sup. Ct. Rep. 89; Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113, 132, 24 L. ed. 77, 86; Henderson Bridge Co. v. Henderson, 173 U. S. 592, 615, 43 L. ed. 823, 831, 19 Sup. Ct. Rep. 553.
In thus criticizing the bill, we do not mean that its allegations are alone to be considered, for due regard also must be had for what is within the range of common knowledge and what is otherwise plainly subject to judicial notice. Brown v. Piper, 91 U. S. 37, 43, 23 L. ed. 200, 202; Brown v. Spilman, 155 U. S. 665, 670, 39 L. ed. 304, 305, 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 245; New Mexico ex rel. McLean v. Denver & R. G. R. Co. 203 U. S. 38, 51, 51 L. ed. 78, 86, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1; Illinois ex rel. McNichols v. Pease, 207 U. S. 100, 111, 52 L. ed. 121, 126, 28 Sup. Ct. Rep. 58. But we rest our criticism upon the fact that the bill is silent in respect of some matters which, although essential to the success of the present contention, are neither within the range of common knowledge nor otherwise plainly subject to judicial notice. So, applying the rule that one who assails the classification in such a law must carry the burden of showing that it is arbitrary, we properly might dismiss the contention without saying more. But it may be well to mention other considerations which make for the same result.
From statements made in the briefs of counsel and in oral argument, we infer that wells not penetrating the rock reach such waters only as escape naturally therefrom through breaks or fissures; and if this be so, it well may be doubted that pumping from such wells has anything like the same effect—if, indeed, it has any—upon the common supply or upon the rights of others, as does pumping from wells which take the waters from within the rock, where they exist under great hydrostatic pressure.
The statute now before us, as affected by the ruling mentioned, makes proof of certain designated facts prima facie, but not conclusive, evidence of the common source of the waters and of the injurious effect of the pumping; that is to say, it setablishes a rebuttable presumption, but neither prevents the presentation of other evidence to overcome it nor cuts off the right to make a full defense. As respects the source of the waters, the presumption appropriately may be regarded as prompted by the fact, now well recognized, that the pervious rock in which the waters exist usually is of such extent as to reach much beyond the lands of a single proprietor and to constitute a common source of supply; and, as respects the effect of the pumping, the presumption appropriately may be regarded as prompted by the fact, before stated, that pumping from a common supply in the rock for the purpose of collecting and vending the gas as a separate commodity usually is carried on in a manner which is calculated to affect injuriously, and does so affect, the rights of others to take from that supply. Regarding the presumption as prompted by these considerations, as we think should be done, it cannot be said that there is not a rational connection between the designated facts which must be proved and the facts which are to be presumed therefrom until the contrary is shown. What we have said upon the subject of classification sufficiently answers the suggestion or claim that, by reason of the presumption, the statute discriminates invidiously between different persons in substantially the same situation.

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