Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/97665/cornell-steamboat-co-vs-united-states
Timestamp: 2018-02-25 19:30:49
Document Index: 407936935

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 302', '§ 302', '§ 3', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 203', '§ 303', '§ 402', '§ 1002', '§ 303']

Cornell Steamboat Co Vs United States - Citation 97665 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
Cornell Steamboat Co. Vs. United States - Court Judgment
LegalCrystal Citation legalcrystal.com/97665
Case Number 321 U.S. 634
Appellant Cornell Steamboat Co.
cornell steamboat co. v. united states - 321 u.s. 634 (1944) u.s. supreme court cornell steamboat co. v. united states, 321 u.s. 634 (1944) cornell steamboat co. v. united states no. 384 argued march 1, 2, 1944 decided april 3, 1944 321 u.s. 634 appeal from the district court of the united states for the southern district of new york syllabus appellant operated tugboats for hire in and about new york harbor and on the hudson river. the tugboats carried no cargo, but towed cargo vessels belonging to others. operations were between new york and new jersey, but mostly between points in new york and other points in the same state. held: 1. appellant was a "water carrier" within the meaning of part iii of the.....
Cornell Steamboat Co. v. United States - 321 U.S. 634 (1944)
U.S. Supreme Court Cornell Steamboat Co. v. United States, 321 U.S. 634 (1944)
1. Appellant was a "water carrier" within the meaning of Part III of the Interstate Commerce Act. P. 321 U. S. 636 .
2. The finding of the Interstate Commerce Commission that appellant was a "common carrier by water" within the meaning of § 302(d) of the Act is supported by substantial evidence, and is sustained. P. 321 U. S. 637 .
towage operations between New York and New Jersey were subject to regulation. P. 321 U. S. 638 .
4. Section 302(i)(1) is properly construed to apply also to appellant's towage operations between points in New York and other points in the same State where, in the course of such operations, the tows regularly crossed into New Jersey waters. P. 321 U. S. 638 .
Cornell operates tugboats for hire on the Hudson River and in and about New York harbor. Its tugs carry no cargo, but move scows, barges, and similar vessels belonging to others which themselves usually carry cargo. This towing service Cornell offers to perform for the public in general. About ninety-five percent of the vessels which it serves are moved from points in New York to other points in the same State, but these movements generally traverse New Jersey, as well as New York, waters. Part III of the Interstate Commerce Act [ Footnote 1 ] provides that contract or common carriers by water in interstate commerce are subject to the Act's regulating provisions. In appropriate proceedings, the Interstate Commerce Commission held Cornell's business covered. Cornell Steamboat Co. Contract Carrier Application, 250 I.C.C. 301; 250
Nevertheless, Cornell argues that the Act's language, which appears on its face plainly to include transportation by means of towers, should not be so construed. In support of this contention, it is said that towers do not have that common law or statutory liability to shippers which generally attaches to common carriers, see Sun Oil Co. v. Dalzell Towing Co., Inc., 287 U. S. 291 ; cf. The Murrell, 200 F. 826, and that a "carrier" has been judicially defined as one who undertakes to transport the goods of another, a definition not inclusive of Cornell, since it does not make contracts to carry goods, but only to move vessels which have goods on them. See Sacramento Nav. Co. v. Salz, 273 U. S. 326 , 273 U. S. 328 ; The Propeller Niagara v. Cordes, 62 U.S.
7, 62 U. S. 22 . But the authorities relied upon by Cornell are of little or no assistance here. The case at bar does not require that we determine at large the legal obligations of a tower, or define the usual characteristics of a carrier. We are called upon only to interpret a single Act of Congress. With unquestioned power to regulate Cornell's business, Congress, in this Act, has given its own definition to Cornell's activities in words literally inclusive of those activities, and which operate to subject to the Act interstate activities in the business of towing, which, at common law, was a common calling. Sproul v. Hemmingway, 14 Pick., Mass. 1, 6. The Act in which Congress has included this definition is designed not to determine the legal status of vessels for all purposes, [ Footnote 2 ] but to provide for regulation of the rates and services of competing interstate water carriers as part of a broad plan of regulation for all types of competing interstate transportation facilities. Cornell is in active competition with other types of interstate water carriers, as well as with trucks and railroads. Therefore, if Cornell's particular method of providing water transportation facilities for others is not subject to regulation under the Act, it would appear to present an anomalous exception to the Congressional plan for regulation of competing transportation activities. We conclude that the language of the Act brings Cornell's business within its coverage, and that to construe the Act otherwise would frustrate the purpose of Congress.
Third. The five percent of Cornell's business which consists of moving vessels between New York and New Jersey ports is unquestionably covered by the Act, because § 302(i)(1) specifically includes transportation "wholly by water from a place in a State to a place in any other State." [ Footnote 3 ] But about ninety-five percent of the vessels towed by Cornell are picked up at New York ports and pulled to other ports in the same State. Cornell contends that none of these movements comes within the Commission's jurisdiction. We accept findings of the Commission and the District Court that at least a substantial proportion of these latter movements regularly and ordinarily pass over New Jersey territorial waters. While moving on New Jersey waters, Cornell's vessels are not
at that time at "a place" in New York. Certain of its towing activities therefore actually move vessels from places in New York to places in New Jersey, and thence back to places in New York. Such movements, if made on land by rail carriers, would be classified as interstate for regulatory purposes under previous decisions of this Court, [ Footnote 4 ] and, as the Commission's opinion points out, these decisions have cast grave doubts upon the power of a single state to regulate such movements in whole or in part. Water transportation between two ports of a single state may touch many other states, and pass through hundreds of miles of other states' waters, far removed from the state in which the terminal ports of the voyage are located. Power of the Commission to regulate such movements appears to come well within the broad purposes declared by Congress in passing legislation designed comprehensively to coordinate a national system of all types of transportation. We are unpersuaded that Congress has inadvertently left such a gap in its plan as acceptance of Cornell's argument would create.
water carriers is, to all practical intents and purposes, the same as it used in Part I, regulating rail carriers. [ Footnote 5 ] Part III of the Act, including this definition, first was drafted in the House Committee on Interstate Commerce as part of a general revision of an omnibus transportation bill (S. 2009) proposed by the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce. See H.R. No. 1217, 76th Cong., 1st Sess. In reporting on the provisions of Part III, the House Committee, a body well acquainted with transportation legislation, made the statement that, "[m]ost of the regulatory provisions included in the new part III were modeled on provisions of part I dealing with the same subject." Id., p. 18. At the time to this reports, the definition of interstate commerce in Part I upon which that in Part III was modeled had long before been interpreted both by the Commission and the courts as broad enough to cover railroad movements which pass through the territory of two states, even though the freight be carried from a place in one state to another place in the same state. Missouri Pac. R. Co. v. Stroud, 267 U. S. 404 . [ Footnote 6 ]
Parts I, II, and IV of the Interstate Commerce Act, relating respectively to regulation of rail carriers, motor carriers, and freight forwarders, explicitly or by judicial interpretation cover all shipments which pass through the territory of two or more states even though both terminal points are in the same state. [ Footnote 7 ] And so, if railroads or truckers
should use tugs for the same purposes and over the same route as Cornell, the movements would be interstate under the Act, and subject to regulation by the Commission, and apparently the same is true of freight forwarders. From the language of Part III of the Act, its history, and its general purpose, we conclude that the Commission and District Court correctly decided Cornell's transportation through New York and New Jersey waters also is subject to regulation by the Commission. [ Footnote 8 ]
Hanley v. Kansas City Southern R. Co., 187 U. S. 617 . The rule of the Hanley case has not been changed by the cases holding that companies engaged in such transportation movements are subject to taxation by the state where the terminal points are located. See Cornell Steamboat Co. v. Sohmer, 235 U. S. 549 ; Lehigh Valley R. Co. v. Pennsylvania, 145 U. S. 192 ; Ewing v. City of Leavenworth, 226 U. S. 464 , 226 U. S. 468 -469.
Compare Wilmington Transp. Co. v. Railroad Comm'n, 236 U. S. 151 , 236 U. S. 155 -156, which held that transportation on the high seas between two points within the state of California, Santa Catalina Island and San Pedro, being "local," and not involving "passage through the territory of another state," was subject to rate regulation by California in the absence of controlling federal legislation.
As reported in the Senate, the original omnibus transportation bill (S. 2009) contained a single definition of "interstate commerce" applicable alike to rail, motor, and water carriers. This definition embodied the holding of the Stroud case, 267 U. S. 404 , cited in our opinion by expressly including "transportation . . . between places in the same State by a route . . . passing beyond the borders of said State." § 3(25), Bill S. 2009, reported to the Senate May 16, 1939. It has been suggested that the failure of the House Committee's revision of Bill S. 2009 to retain this part of the definition contained in the original bill indicates an intention that the rule of the Stroud case should not apply to water transportation. In reaching our conclusion in the present case, we have considered this suggestion and have rejected it for several reasons.
See S.R. No. 433, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 4, and H.R. No. 1217, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 18-19. Cf. McLean Trucking Co., Inc. v. United States, 321 U. S. 67 .
U.S. 557. That decision rested fundamentally on the view that rail transportation has a physical unity, and to such an extent that, as held very early, regulation of rail rates cannot be "split up" between two States or left only to one State even as to transportation which begins and ends in the same State, but passes through the territory of another. See Hanley v. Kansas City Southern R. Co., 187 U. S. 617 . The terms in which Congress granted regulatory power over railroads to the Interstate Commerce Commission reflected this view. The Commission was authorized to regulate rail transportation "from one State . . . to any other State," but the provisions of the Act were not to apply "to the transportation . . . wholly within one State. . . ." § 1 of the Act to Regulate Commerce, 24 Stat. 379, 49 U.S.C. §§ 1(1), (2)(a). When Congress, in 1935, brought motor carriers within the regulatory powers of the Commission, it was not content to define the scope of the transportation to be regulated in terms of the scope of the regulated railroad transportation. It defined the motor transportation to be regulated to include "commerce between any place in a State and any place in another State or between places in the same State through another State." § 203(a)(10) of the Motor Carrier Act of 1935, 49 Stat. 543, 544, 49 U.S.C. § 303(a)(10). It used this explicit and precise language because the conditions of motor transportation in relation to state control differ from the conditions of interstate railroad transportation, and it wished to leave no doubt whatever that it was regulating rates on motor transportation within the same State through another. The same explicitness was again used by Congress when, in 1942, it swept freight forwarders who serve interstate transportation within federal control. § 402(a)(6), 56 Stat. 284, 285, 49 U.S.C. (Supp. 1942) § 1002(a)(6).
the country. In his report as Federal Coordinator of Transportation, the late Commissioner Eastman pointed out that thirty-two States had laws regulating water transportation "on inland waters and in some instances on bordering streams or lakes and coastal waters." Sen.Doc. No. 152, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., p. 158. This Court, in Port Richmond Ferry Co. v. Hudson County, 234 U. S. 317 , had occasion to call attention to this lively water traffic which, throughout our history, presented "a situation essentially local, requiring regulation according to local conditions." 234 U.S. at 234 U. S. 332 . For that reason, it sustained State regulation of ferry rates even for transportation from one State to another. * The doctrine of Hanley v. Kansas City Southern R. Co., supra, is thus a doctrine applicable to railroads, and has not been applied to water carriers. See Wilmington Transp. Co. v. Railroad Comm'n, 236 U. S. 151 , 236 U. S. 155 -156.
which, in the case of rail and motor transportation, federal control has been asserted. Thus, for instance, use of the Shreveport doctrine ( see Houston E. & W.T. Ry. Co. v. United States, 234 U. S. 342 ) -- the control over state rates discriminatory against interstate rates -- is explicitly denied (§ 303(k)), and numerous other exceptions and exemptions show "congressional intent to confer more limited jurisdiction than has been given in the other parts of the act." Cornell Steamboat Co. Contract Carrier Application, 250 I.C.C. 577, 586.
234 U.S. at 234 U. S. 332 .