Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/87755/united-states-vs-union-pacific-ry-co
Timestamp: 2019-10-20 01:16:33
Document Index: 713434354

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1', '§ 3', '§ 4', '§ 5', '§ 6', '§ 7', '§ 1', '§ 2', '§ 19', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 5']

United States Vs Union Pacific Ry Co - Citation 87755 - Court Judgment | LegalCrystal
United States Vs. Union Pacific Ry. Co. - Court Judgment
LegalCrystal Citation legalcrystal.com/87755
Case Number 160 U.S. 1
Respondent Union Pacific Ry. Co.
united states v. union pacific ry. co. - 160 u.s. 1 (1895) u.s. supreme court united states v. union pacific ry. co., 160 u.s. 1 (1895) united states v. union pacific railway company no. 334 argued october 18, 1894 decided november 18, 1895 160 u.s. 1 appeal from the circuit court of appeals for the eighth circuit syllabus the objects which congress sought to accomplish by the act of july 1, 1862, c. 120, 12 stat. 489, granting a subsidy to aid in the construction of both a railroad and a telegraph line from the missouri river to the pacific ocean, and by the act of july 2, 1864, c. 216, 13 stat. 356, amendatory thereof, were the construction, the maintenance, and the operation of both a railroad and a telegraph.....
United States v. Union Pacific Ry. Co. - 160 U.S. 1 (1895)
U.S. Supreme Court United States v. Union Pacific Ry. Co., 160 U.S. 1 (1895)
The provisions in those acts permitting the railroad company to arrange with certain telegraph companies for placing their lines upon and along the route of the railroad and its branches did not affect the authority of Congress, under its reserved power, to require the maintenance and operation by the railroad company itself, through its own officers and employees, of a telegraph line over and along its main line and branches.
The agreement of July 1, 1887, between the Union Pacific Railway Company and the Western Union Telegraph Company is illegal not only to the extent it assumes to give to the telegraph company exclusive rights and advantages in respect of the use of the way of the railroad company for
By the first section of the above act of 1888, it is provided that all railroad and telegraph companies to which the United States have granted any subsidy in lands or bonds or loan of
If any railroad or telegraph company referred to in the first section, or any company operating such railroad or telegraph line, refuses or fails, in whole or in part, to maintain and operate a telegraph line as provided in the act of 1888 and the acts to which it is supplementary, "for the use of the government or the public, for commercial and other purposes, without discrimination," or refuses or fails to make or continue such arrangements for the interchange of business with any connecting telegraph company, then, by the third section, application for
Two agreements, one of September 1, 1869, and one of
that if the business of the railway company should in its opinion require more than one wire, they might appropriate another wire, upon paying to the telegraph company the cost of such wire on the poles, the telegraph company to attach such other wire for the use of the company; that the business of the railway company of every kind, and the family, private, and social messages of its executive officers, should be transmitted without charge between all telegraph stations on the line of said roadway and between all such stations and St. Louis, and over all other lines in Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico then owned or controlled or which might thereafter be owned or controlled by the telegraph company, provided, so far as said lines in Colorado and New Mexico were concerned, and the road or roads of the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division, were at the time in process of construction towards Santa Fe or Denver, or both, all such business should be transmitted free of charge over all other lines then or thereafter to be owned or controlled by the telegraph company within the United States, to an amount not exceeding $4,000 per annum, with a rebate of one-half of regular tariff charges for all in excess of that amount; that, until a second wire was put up,
By the agreement of September 1, 1869, between the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company and the Union Pacific Railroad Company, the railroad company, in consideration of 33,000 shares of the stock of the telegraph
The agreement between the Western Union Telegraph Company and the Union Pacific Railway Company of July 1, 1881, recites that the former corporation had acquired all of the property, rights, and franchises of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company, and was in possession of and operating a separate line of poles and wires along the main line of the Union Pacific Railway Company between Omaha and Ogden; that the parties were then, and for some time past had been, operating lines of telegraph along various roads of the railway company under sundry contracts, thirteen in number, including the above agreements of 1866, 1869, and 1871, and made between the railway company or companies formerly in possession of lines of railroad then controlled by and forming part of that company and the Western Union Telegraph Company or other telegraph companies that had become
Upon appeal by the defendants to the United States circuit court of appeals, the decree of the circuit court was reversed and the cause remanded with directions to enter a modified decree adjudging, among other things, that the agreement of October 1, 1866, was a lawful and binding contract, and continued in force until it was superseded by the agreement of July 1, 1881; that the agreements of September 1, 1869, and December 14, 1871, were beyond the powers of the Union Pacific Railroad Company, and must be annulled; that the equities arising out of the two last-named agreements were adjusted and settled by the parties interested when they made the contract of July 1, 1881, and that the last-named agreement was valid and binding in all respects except that the third and fourth paragraphs were null and void to the extent, and only to the extent, that they secured or granted or were intended to secure and grant to the Western Union Telegraph Company any exclusive rights, privileges, or advantages whatsoever. 59 F. 813.
Before examining the provisions of the agreements that were annulled by the decree of the circuit court, it is necessary to ascertain the nature and extent of the obligations imposed upon the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the other constituent companies of the Union Pacific Railway
By the first section of the above Act of July 1, 1862, the Union Pacific Railroad Company was authorized and empowered "to lay out, locate, construct, furnish, maintain, and enjoy a continuous railroad and telegraph" from a named point in the then Territory of Nebraska to the western boundary of Nevada territory; by the second section, a right of way through the public lands was given "for the construction of said railroad and telegraph line;" by the third section, a grant of public lands was made "for the purpose of aiding in the construction of said railroad and telegraph line;" by the fourth section, patents for lands granted were to be issued
By the eleventh section, it was provided, in respect of bonds
By the twenty-second section, it was declared that "congress many at any time alter, amend, or repeal this act.”
The authority given to the Union Pacific Railroad Company to lay out, locate, construct, furnish, maintain, and enjoy a continuous railroad and telegraph line on that route, § 1; the grant of public lands for the purpose of aiding in the construction of said railroads and telegraph line, § 3; the direction that patents for lands granted should be issued as each forty consecutive miles of such railroad and telegraph line appeared, upon the certificate of commissioners, appointed by the President, to have been completed and equipped in all respects as required, § 4; the making the bonds of the United States a first mortgage on the whole line of the railroad and telegraph, § 5; the explicit declaration that the grants of public lands were made upon the condition, among others, that the company should keep said railroad and telegraph line in repair and use, and at all times transmit dispatches over said telegraph line, § 6; the requirement that the company should complete said railroad and telegraph on the route prescribed and within a named time, § 7; the reservation that Congress may at any
The purpose of Congress, as indicated in the act of 1862, to provide for the construction of telegraph lines by the companies named in it, in connection with their respective railroads, was unchanged at the time of the passage of the amendatory Act of July 2, 1864, c. 216. The latter act, as we have seen, gave authority to the companies authorized to participate in the construction of the roads that were to connect the Missouri River with the Pacific Ocean to place a first mortgage on their respective railroads and telegraph lines, and made the mortgage held by the United States subordinate to it. Section 10. It did more. It required those companies to operate and use their roads and telegraph for all purposes of communication,
By the latter act, the United States Telegraph Company and its associates were authorized to erect a line or lines of magnetic telegraph between the Missouri River and San Francisco on such routes as they might select, to connect with its lines then constructed and being constructed through the states of the Union. It was given the use of such unoccupied land of the United States as was necessary for right of way and materials, and for the establishing of stations along said line for repairs, not exceeding at any station one quarter-section of land, and such stations not to exceed one in fifteen miles on the average of the whole line, unless said lands should be required by the government of the United States for railroad or other purposes. § 1. Under the direction of the President of the United States, it was authorized to erect a telegraph line from Fort Hall to Portland, Oregon, and from Fort Hall to Bannock and Virginia City, in the Territory of Idaho, with the same privileges as to the right of way and so forth as provided in the first section, the United States to have priority in the use of said lines of telegraph to Oregon and Idaho. § 2. It was authorized to send and receive dispatches, on payment of the regular charges for transmission, over any line then or thereafter to be constructed by the
Referring to the nineteenth section of the act of 1862, Mr. Justice Miller, in Western Union Tel. Co. v. Union Pacific Railway, 3 F. 721, 728, said:
We concur in these observations as to the scope and effect of the nineteenth section of the act of 1862, and of the like section in the Idaho Act of July 2, 1864, c. 220. But it must be observed that the transfer to the roadway of the Union Pacific Railroad of the lines of the telegraph companies, or either of them, named in the nineteenth section of the act of 1862 was not in pursuance of any "arrangement" made with those companies. On the contrary, as stated by counsel, the lines constructed by telegraph companies between Omaha and Ogden, and operated by the Western Union Telegraph Company prior to the actual completion of the railroad between those points, were transferred to the south side of the railroad as the work of railroad construction proceeded, without any arrangement whatever with the railroad company. This was done under that clause in the nineteenth section of the act of
We have seen that the object of giving governmental aid to the corporations named in the act of 1862 was to promote the
It would not be competent for Congress, under the guise of altering and amending the act in question, to impose upon the railroad company duties wholly foreign to the objects for which it was created or for which governmental aid was given. Neither could it, by such alteration or amendment, destroy rights actually vested, nor disturb transactions fully consummated. We may here not inappropriately repeat what was said in the Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U. S. 700 , 99 U. S. 718 -720, that "this power has a limit," and
It may be that Congress passed the act of 1888 because, in its judgment, the rights of the government and of the public in the matter of telegraphic communication could be fully secured or effectively guarded only by means of telegraph lines maintained and operated by a corporation deriving its power from the general government, and subject, in respect
The contention that the act of 1888 did not have due regard to the rights of the railroad company is based upon that provision in the act of 1862 (§ 19), and a similar provision in the act of 1864 (§ 4), which permitted the railroad company to make an "arrangement" with certain telegraph companies to place their lines upon and along the route of the railroad and branches -- such transfer to be held and considered, for all the purposes of the act, a fulfillment on the part of said railroad companies of the provisions of the act "in regard to the construction of said lines of telegraph." But such an arrangement, accompanied by the transfer of telegraph lines constructed by telegraph companies to the roadway of the railroad company, had no other effect than to relieve the railroad company from any present duty itself to construct a telegraph
In this view, it must be held that by its reservation of authority to add to, alter, amend, or repeal the acts in question
These principles are fully supported by former decisions in which this Court has determined the scope and effect of constitutional or statutory provisions that reserved to the legislature granting charters of incorporation, or enacting statutes under which private rights might be acquired, the power to alter, amend, or repeal such charters or statutes. Tomlinson v. Jessup, 15 Wall. 454, 82 U. S. 457 -458; Miller v. State, 15 Wall. 478; Holyoke Co. v. Lyman, 15 Wall. 500; Sinking Fund Cases, 99 U. S. 700 , 99 U. S. 720 -721; Greenwood v. Freight Co., 105 U. S. 13 , 105 U. S. 21 ; Close v. Glenwood Cemetery, 107 U. S. 466 , 107 U. S. 476 ; Spring Valley Waterworks v. Schottler, 110 U. S. 347 , 110 U. S. 352 ; Louisville Gas. Co. v. Citizens' Gas Co., 115 U. S. 683 , 115 U. S. 696 ; Gibbs v. Consolidated Gas Co., 130 U. S. 396 , 130 U. S. 408 ; Sioux City Street Railway v. Sioux City, 138 U. S. 98 , 138 U. S. 108 ; Louisville Water Co. v. Clark, 143 U. S. 1 , 143 U. S. 12 -14; Hamilton Gaslight Co. v. Hamilton City, 146 U. S. 258 , 146 U. S. 270 ; N.Y. and N.E. Railroad v. Bristol, 151 U. S. 556 , 151 U. S. 567 .
What has been said in reference to the effect of the reservation in the act of 1862 of the right of adding to, altering, amending, or repealing its provisions, is applicable to the fourth section of the Idaho Act of July 2, 1864, which permitted the several railroad companies referred to in the act of 1862 to make an arrangement with the United States Telegraph Company, such as was permitted by the nineteenth section of the act of 1862 to be made with the telegraph companies therein
Looking first at the agreement of October 1, 1866, between the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division, and the Western Union Telegraph Company, it will be seen that the Western Union Telegraph Company does not, in that agreement,
The provision that the railway company should transport for the telegraph company, free of charge, all the persons engaged, and material required, in the construction, repairing, and maintaining the telegraph line for which the agreement provided, while exacting from other telegraph companies, for persons engaged and for property intended to be used in building a telegraph line on the railway company's roadway, the usual rates for passengers and freight, §§ 4, 5; the stipulation that the railway company should not give permission to another telegraph company to construct or operate any telegraph line upon the lands or roadway of the railway company, without the consent in writing of the telegraph company, § 5; the provision that the railway company should not, without the consent of the telegraph company, transmit commercial or paid business from any station where the latter had an office, and the provision that the railway company should account for and pay over to the telegraph company at the tariff rates established by the latter, all sums received by
It is clear that the essential part of the agreement of 1866 is prohibited by this Act of July 24, 1866. As that act gave every telegraph company organized under state laws and accepting its provisions the right to erect its poles and wires upon the post roads of the United States, the agreement of the Union Pacific Railway Company, Eastern Division, that it would not permit, except with the consent of the Western Union Telegraph Company, other telegraph companies to use its roadway,
directly tended to make the Act of July 24, 1866, ineffectual, and was therefore hostile to the object contemplated by Congress. Pensacola Tel. Co. v. Western Union Tel. Co., 96 U. S. 1 , 96 U. S. 11 . The railway company, operating one of the post roads of the United States, over which interstate commerce was carried on, could not, at least after the passage of that act, grant to anyone or more telegraph companies the exclusive right to use its roadway for telegraphic purposes.
The purpose of the fourth section of the Idaho Act is quite apparent. Its effect was, as we have heretofore said, to relieve each of the railroad companies named in the act of 1862 from
In reference to the agreements of 1869 and 1871 between the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, but little need be said to show that they were void. By those agreements, the former corporation demised and leased to the telegraph company, to whose rights, it may be assumed, the Western Union Telegraph Company succeeded,
all the telegraph lines, wires, poles, instruments, offices, and other property appertaining to telegraph business that were possessed by the railroad company. These agreements were annulled by the circuit court, and it was likewise so adjudged by the circuit court of appeals. The same conclusion had been previously announced by Judge McCrary in Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co. v. Union Pacific Railway Co., 1 F. 745. That able judge well said:
Much said in this opinion touching the agreements of 1866, 1869, and 1871, is applicable to that of 1881, and need not be here repeated. We have no difficulty in holding that the latter was invalid in the particulars named in the final decree of the circuit court of appeals. But that agreement is illegal not simply to the extent that it assumes to give to the Western Union Telegraph Company exclusive rights and advantages in respect of the use of the way of the railroad company for telegraph business, but it is also illegal because, in effect, it transfers to the Western Union Telegraph Company the telegraphic franchise granted it by the government of the United States. The duty to maintain and operate a telegraph line between the points specified in the act of 1862 was committed by Congress to certain corporations which it named, and neither they nor any corporation into which they were
That the purpose of the agreement of 1881 was to transfer to the Western Union Telegraph Company the telegraphic franchises granted by the United States was asserted by that company in a bill filed by it (a copy of which is made a part
This inquiry need not be further extended except to observe that there would be no occasion to make the Western Union Telegraph Company a defendant in this suit, and it would not have any standing in court to complain of the Act of August 7, 1888, if it did not claim that the construction, or the maintenance and operation by the railway company, through its own employees, of a distinct telegraph line on the route of its road, for the use of the government and of the public, was in violation of the contract it had made with the railroad company.
We perceive no ground on which this contention can properly rest. It has already been fully examined. As we have seen, Congress, in the act of 1862, expressly reserved the power not only to alter, amend, or repeal that act, but to add to its provisions. To what has already been said as to the power of Congress under this reserved power we may add that the object of such reservation is to enable the legislative
Tomlinson v. Jessup, 15 Wall. 454, 82 U. S. 457 -458.
It cannot be doubted that the government could lawfully proceed by mandamus against the railway company for the purpose simply of compelling it to perform any duty imposed by its charter or by statute. But that remedy would not afford the United States the full relief to which it is entitled. Here are agreements between the railway company and the telegraph company that are wholly inconsistent with the present claims of the government. Until cancelled because inconsistent with the act of 1888 and prejudicial to the rights of the government and the public by a decree to which the telegraph company is a party, those agreements constitute an obstacle in the way of the enforcement of that act and the protection of those rights. In a mandamus proceeding by the government against the railway company, the telegraph company could not properly be made a defendant, and no judgment in mandamus, as between the United States and the railway company, would conclude the rights of the telegraph company. The United States is certainly entitled to the interposition of equity for the cancellation of the agreements under which the telegraph company asserts rights inconsistent with the act of 1862 and the acts amendatory thereof, as well as with the act of 1888. Jurisdiction in equity being acquired for that purpose, the court, in order to avoid a multiplicity of suits, can proceed to a decree that will settle all matters in dispute between the United States, the railway company, and the telegraph company which relate to the general subject of telegraphic communication between the
Indeed, in a proceeding by mandamus instituted against the railway company alone, it might be objected that a court of competent jurisdiction, in a suit brought by the telegraph company against the railroad company, had enjoined the latter, as between it and the telegraph company, from disregarding the agreement of 1881. Atlantic & Pacific Tel. Co. v. Union Pacific Railway, 1 F. 745; Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Union Pacific Railway, 3 F. 423; Same v. Same, 3 F. 721. It is true that the United States, with leave of court, might have intervened in that suit. But it was not bound to do so. It was entitled to institute its own suit, and bring before the court both companies, to the end that its rights might be declared and enforced by a comprehensive decree against both defendants.
In Boyce v. Grundy, 3 Pet. 210, 28 U. S. 215 , this Court said:
The circumstances of each case must determine the application of the rule. Watson v. Sutherland, 5 Wall. 74, 72 U. S. 79 . In Oelrichs v. Spain, 15 Wall. 211, 82 U. S. 228 , an objection was raised that the remedy at law was ample. The Court, observing that the remedy at law was not as effectual as in equity, said, among other things, that a "direct proceeding in equity will save time, expense, and a multiplicity of suits, and settle finally the rights of all concerned in one litigation." The final order, in a proceeding by mandamus against the railway company, would not conclude the rights of the telegraph company. Nor would a suit in equity by the telegraph company against the railway company conclude the rights of the United States. But a suit in equity by the United States against both companies for the purpose of annulling
the agreements under which the telegraph company claims rights adverse to the United States can embrace all the matters in controversy and authorize a comprehensive decree that will terminate all disputes among the parties as to such matters. Coosaw Mining Co. v. South Carolina, 144 U. S. 550 , 144 U. S. 567 .
We perceive no substantial error in the decree passed by the circuit court. There are some minor provisions in each