Source: https://www.chanrobles.com/usa/us_supremecourt/297/175/case.php
Timestamp: 2020-02-29 09:57:47
Document Index: 209953105

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 233', '§ 341', '§ 6', '§ 233', '§ 6', '§ 6', '§ 233', '§ 6', '§ 233', '§ 6', '§ 6']

8. Congress may confer on inferior courts original jurisdiction of suits in which a State is a party. P. 297 U. S. 187. chanrobles.com-red
Certiorari, 296 U.S. 554, to review a judgment reversing a judgment for a penalty recovered by the United States against the California by suit in the District Court. chanrobles.com-red
The complaint alleges that California, in the operation of the state-owned State Belt Railroad, is a common carrier engaged in interstate transportation by railroad, and that it has violated the Safety Appliance Act by hauling over the road a car equipped with defective coupling apparatus. Upon the trial, without a jury, upon stipulated facts, the District Court gave judgment for the United States. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed, 75 F.2d 41, on the ground that, as exclusive jurisdiction of suits to which a state is a party is conferred upon this Court by § 233 of the Judicial Code, 36 Stat. 1156, 28 U.S.C. § 341, the District Court was without chanrobles.com-red
1. Whether a transportation agency is a common carrier depends not upon its corporate character or declared purposes, but upon what it does. United States v. Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal, 249 U. S. 296, 249 U. S. 304. The State Belt Railroad is owned and operated by the state, see Sherman v. United States, supra. It parallels the waterfront of San Francisco harbor and extends onto some forty-five state-owned wharves. It serves directly about one hundred and seventy-five industrial plants, has track connection with one interstate railroad, and, by wharf connections with freight car ferries, links that and three other interstate rail carriers with freight yards in San Francisco leased to them by the state. It receives and transports from the one to the other, by its own engines, all freight cars, loaded and empty, and the freight they contain, offered to it by railroads, steamship companies, and industrial plants. The larger part of this traffic has its origin or destination in states other than California. For the transportation service, it makes a flat charge per car. It issues no bills of lading, and is not a party to through rates. It moves the cars on instructions contained in "switch lists" made out by the delivering or receiving carrier, which pays the charge and absorbs it in its rate. The chanrobles.com-red
The state insists that the facts that it maintains no freight station, issues no bills of lading, and is engaged only in moving cars for a flat rate instead of at a charge per hundred pounds of freight moved, distinguish the operation of its railroad from that of the Brooklyn Terminal. As the service involves transportation of the cars and their contents, the method of fixing the charge is unimportant. Belt Railway Co. of Chicago v. United States, 168 F.5d 2, 544; see United States v. Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., 226 U. S. 286, 226 U. S. 299-300. And, while maintenance of a freight station and the issue of bills of lading may be embraced in the service of a common carrier, and a part of interstate commerce, see United States v. Ferger, 250 U. S. 199, Atchison, T. & S.F. Ry. Co. v. United States, 295 U. S. 193, they are not indispensable adjuncts to either where the subject of transportation -- here cars loaded and empty -- may be effected without.
All the essential elements of interstate rail transportation are present in the service rendered by the State Belt Railroad. They are the receipt and transportation, for the public, for hire, of cars moving in interstate commerce. See United States v. Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., supra, 226 U. S. 299; Union Stockyards Co. v. United chanrobles.com-red
States, 169 F.4d 4; Belt Railway Co. of Chicago v. United States, supra. Its service, involving as it does the transportation of all carload freight moving in interstate commerce between the industries concerned and all railroad and steamship lines reaching the port, is of the same character, though wider in scope, as that held to be common carriage by rail in interstate commerce in the Brooklyn Eastern District Terminal and the Union Stockyards Co. cases. They abundantly support the conclusion that such is the service rendered by the state in the present case, a conclusion twice reached by the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, see McCallum v. United States, 298 F.3d 3; Tilden v. United States, 21 F.2d 967.
Despite reliance upon the point both by the government and the state, we think it unimportant to say whether the state conducts its railroad in its "sovereign" or in its "private" capacity. That, in operating its railroad, it is acting within a power reserved to the states cannot be doubted. See Puget Sound Power & Light Co. v. Seattle, 291 U. S. 619, 291 U. S. 624; Green v. Frazier, 253 U. S. 233; Jones v. Portland, 245 U. S. 217. The only question we need consider is whether the exercise of that power, in chanrobles.com-red
The analogy of the constitutional immunity of state instrumentalities from federal taxation, on which respondent relies, is not illuminating. That immunity is implied from the nature of our federal system and the relationship within it of state and national governments, and is equally a restriction on taxation by either of the instrumentalities of the other. Its nature requires that it be so construed as to allow to each government reasonable scope for its taxing power, see Metcalf & Eddy v. Mitchell, 269 U. S. 514, 269 U. S. 522-524, which would be unduly curtailed if either by extending its activities could withdraw from the taxing power of the other subjects of taxation traditionally within it. Helvering v. Powers, 293 U. S. 214, 293 U. S. 225; Ohio v. Helvering, 292 U. S. 360; South Carolina v. United States, 199 U. S. 437; see 213 U. S. 173, explaining South Carolina v. United States, [email protected] Hence, we look to the activities in which the states have traditionally engaged as marking the boundary of the restriction upon the federal taxing power. But there is no such limitation upon the plenary power to regulate commerce. The state can no more deny the power if its exercise has been authorized by Congress than can an individual.
In Ohio v. Helvering, supra, it was held that a state, upon engaging in the business, became subject to a federal chanrobles.com-red
Respondent invokes the canon of construction that a sovereign is presumptively not intended to be bound by its own statute unless named in it, see Guarantee Title & Trust Co. v. Title Guaranty & Surety Co., 224 U. S. 152; 87 U. S. 255; 86 U. S. 239. The presumption is an aid to consistent construction of statutes of the enacting sovereign when their purpose is in doubt, but it does not require that the aim of a statute fairly to be inferred be disregarded because not explicitly stated. See Baltimore National Bank v. State Tax Commission of Maryland, post, p. 297 U. S. 209. We can perceive no reason for extending it so as to exempt a business carried on by a state from the otherwise applicable provisions of an act of Congress, all-embracing in scope and national in its purpose, which is as capable of being obstructed by state as by individual action. Language and objectives so plain are not to be thwarted by resort to a rule of construction whose purpose is but to resolve doubts, and whose application in the circumstances would be highly chanrobles.com-red
If it be assumed that the present suit to recover the payment denominated a "penalty" by § 6 is a controversy of a civil nature, but see Wisconsin v. Pelican Insurance Co., 127 U. S. 265, cf. Milwaukee County v. M. E. White Co., 296 U. S. 268, it is by § 233 of the Judicial Code within the exclusive jurisdiction of this Court, unless that provision is supplanted with respect chanrobles.com-red
to suits such as the present by the provisions of § 6. Upon that assumption, § 6 is in conflict with § 233 of the Judicial Code, and supersedes it, United States v. Yuginovich, 256 U. S. 450, 256 U. S. 463, United States ex rel. Chandler v. Dodge County Commissioners, 110 U. S. 156, @ 78 U. S. 92, unless, again, the general language of § 6 is to be taken as not applying to suits brought against a state. Since the section which, as we have held, imposes the liability upon state and privately owned carriers alike also provides the remedy and designates the manner and the court in which the remedy is to be pursued, we think the jurisdictional provisions are as applicable to suits brought to enforce the liability of states as to those against privately owned carriers, and that the District Court had jurisdiction.
If we lay aside possible doubts whether the suit is of a "civil nature," in which case only does § 233 of the Judicial Code purport to make the jurisdiction of this Court exclusive, still, in construing the jurisdictional provisions of § 6 of the Safety Appliance Act, practical convenience, and "the tacit assumptions" upon which it is reasonable to suppose its language was used, see Ohio ex rel. Popovici v. Agler, 280 U. S. 379, 280 U. S. 383, are not to be disregarded. The controversy in a suit authorized by § 6 is essentially local in character, and involves issues for which a jury trial may be appropriate, compare 3 U. S. Brailsford, 3 Dall. 1. Their adjudication often requires the presence, as witnesses, of railroad workers, shippers, and others of the locality. These are considerations which undoubtedly led to the command that the suit should be brought in the district court of the "locality" where violations occur. They are considerations as applicable to suits against a state as to suits against a privately owned railroad. The suggestion that it should be assumed that Congress did not intend to subject a sovereign state to the inconvenience and loss of dignity involved chanrobles.com-red