Opinion ID: 6495150
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Interurban Electric Railway Company

Text: We first address the Texas Central Entities’ asserted eminentdomain authority under Transportation Code Chapter 131 as “corporation[s] chartered for the purpose of constructing, acquiring, maintaining, or operating lines of electric railway between municipalities in this state for the transportation of . . . passengers.” Id. § 131.012. This language could not be more plain insofar as its application to the rail project at issue, which is an “electric railway between municipalities in this state”—Houston and Dallas—“for the transportation of . . . passengers.” Indeed, Miles does not contend otherwise. (2) enter, condemn, and appropriate land, right-of-way, easements, or other property of any person or corporation to acquire: (A) right-of-way on which to construct and operate lines of railway for the acquiring corporation; or (B) sites for depots or power plants. TEX. TRANSP. CODE § 131.012. 11 Rather, Miles asserts that modern high-speed rail cannot be “shoehorned” into the concept of the interurban electric railway the Legislature envisioned in originally enacting Chapter 131’s predecessor in 1907. 4 He asserts that the “concept of an ‘interurban electric railway’ is a technical term” that describes “a specific kind of train: the singlecar interurban electric railways that were an ‘outgrowth of the urban trolley’ car and that ran throughout Texas in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” The dissent agrees, opining that Chapter 131, read in its historical context, applies only to a kind of train with the ability “to operate in a manner like a single-car trolley lumbering down Main Street.” Post at 7 (Huddle, J., dissenting). Viewed as a whole, Chapter 131 is simply not limited in the way that Miles and the dissent contend. First, no provisions in Chapter 131 (or its statutory predecessor) place any limitations on the speed a train may reach in traveling along the anticipated railway, the size of the train, or the distance between the “municipalities in this state” that the railway connects. And in addition to the broad grant of authority in Section 131.012, the statutory scheme contemplates much more than a “lumbering” trolley car. For example, Chapter 131 authorizes “[a] corporation described by Section 131.012” to “lay out right-of-way not to exceed 200 feet in width for its railways,” to “construct its railways and appurtenances on that right-of-way,” and to “take [with appropriate compensation] for the purpose of cuttings and embankments additional land necessary for the proper construction and security of its railways.” See Act effective Mar. 9, 1907, 30th Leg., R.S., ch. 15, 1907 Tex. Gen. 4 Laws 23. 12 TEX. TRANSP. CODE § 131.013(a). These provisions are wholly compatible with the scale of the project at issue, which will require fortyfoot embankments and rights-of-way of up to 100 feet. Chapter 131 further authorizes a qualifying corporation to “construct its railway along, across, or over any stream, water course, bay, navigable water, arm of the sea, street, highway, steam railway, turnpike, or canal located in the route of its electric railway,” id. § 131.014(a), and to “erect and operate a bridge, tram, trestle, or causeway” over or across any such waterway or infrastructure, id. § 131.014(b). Such a bridge or structure “may not be erected so as to unnecessarily or unreasonably prevent the navigation of the [waterway].” Id. § 131.014(c). Chapter 131 thus anticipates that the railway could cross major bodies of water and could require extensive infrastructure to do so. It is true that some of Chapter 131’s provisions also contemplate the possibility that an interurban could operate “on or across a street, alley, square, or property of a municipality.” Id. § 131.014(d). For example, a railway company is authorized to condemn “easements and right-of-way to operate interurban cars . . . on the track of an electric street railway company . . . on any public street or alley in a municipality,” subject to the municipality’s consent, in order to “secure an entrance into and an outlet from [the] municipality.” Id. § 131.015(a)–(b). And when it obtains such easements by condemnation, the company must complete construction of the “road” between municipalities within twelve months from the date of the final judgment awarding the easement. Id. § 131.016; see also id. §§ 131.101, .103 13 (requiring “a person or corporation owning or operating a street railway in or on the public streets of a municipality with a population of 40,000 or more” to sell reduced-fare tickets to children and students). While these particular provisions do not apply to the kind of high-speed rail project at issue, which undisputedly will not operate on streets within a municipality, they are not an indication that Chapter 131 as a whole encompasses only those projects involving trains that will do so. 5 We do not read Chapter 131 to implicitly place the above-described limitations on the statute’s scope—regarding speed, size, and distance—that the Legislature easily could have placed expressly but chose not to. See BankDirect Cap. Fin., LLC v. Plasma Fab, LLC, 519 S.W.3d 76, 87 (Tex. 2017) (“We must rely on the words of the statute, rather than rewrite those words to achieve an unstated purpose.” (citation omitted)). 5 Miles also appears to contend that the fact that the Texas Central Entities’ proposed railway will connect to the interstate rail system, and thus be subject to the Surface Transportation Board’s jurisdiction, means it cannot be an “interurban” railway. We disagree. The Board “has jurisdiction over transportation by rail carrier,” 49 U.S.C. § 10501(a)(1), including “transportation in the United States between a place in . . . a State and a place in the same or another State as part of the interstate rail network,” id. § 10501(a)(2)(A). “[R]ail carrier” is defined to exclude “interurban electric railways not operated as part of the general system of rail transportation.” Id. § 10102(5). The only reasonable reading of these provisions is that interurban electric railways that are operated as part of the general system of rail transportation are subject to the Board’s jurisdiction. They certainly do not indicate that any railway connected to the interstate rail network cannot qualify as an “interurban” railway. See Spokane & Inland Empire R.R. Co. v. United States, 241 U.S. 344, 346 (1916) (considering the application of federal railway‐safety laws to a company that operated “several interurban electric lines, one of which extended from Spokane[, Washington] to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho”). 14 Of course, when the statutes governing interurban electric railways were originally enacted in 1907, the modern version of highspeed rail had not yet been developed. To support his argument that Chapter 131 thus cannot apply to high-speed rail, Miles relies on the interpretive principle that when a statute contains undefined terms, we consider the terms’ ordinary, common meaning when the statute was enacted. VIA Metro. Transit v. Meck, 620 S.W.3d 356, 369 (Tex. 2020) (citing Taylor v. Firemen’s & Policemen’s Civ. Serv. Comm’n, 616 S.W.2d 187, 189 (Tex. 1981)). That principle is of limited usefulness here for several reasons. First, we are not attempting to discern the ordinary meaning of an undefined term, as Chapter 131 specifically defines the term “interurban electric railway company” as a “corporation chartered . . . to conduct and operate an electric railway between two municipalities in this state.” TEX. TRANSP. CODE § 131.011. Second, even if the term were undefined, Chapter 131 is not written to grant eminent-domain authority to an “interurban electric railway company.” Rather, after defining that term in Section 131.011, the statute goes on in Section 131.012 to confer such authority even more broadly on “[a] corporation chartered for the purpose of constructing, acquiring, maintaining, or operating lines of electric railway between municipalities in this state for the transportation of freight, passengers, or both freight and passengers.” Id. § 131.012. There is no dispute about the ordinary meaning of any of those words, either individually or in context. To construe Chapter 131 as inapplicable to the Texas Central Entities requires placing extratextual, and thus improper, limitations on the statute’s reach. 15 Third, we have long interpreted statutes, including eminentdomain statutes, to embrace later-developed technologies when the statutory text allows. Over a century ago, in examining the statutes governing telegraph companies’ exercise of the right of eminent domain, we explained that “if the [statutory] language used is broad enough to embrace a subsequently developed method, the later invention might be controlled by the pre-existing law, as if it had been in existence at the time the law was made.” San Antonio & A.P. Ry. Co. v. Sw. Tel. & Tel. Co., 55 S.W. 117, 117 (Tex. 1900). We thus held that those statutes applied to telephone companies even though “it cannot be supposed that the legislature had telephones in mind when it used the word ‘telegraph.’” Id.; see also Kaufman v. Islamic Soc’y of Arlington, 291 S.W.3d 130, 140–41 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2009, pet. denied) (citing San Antonio & A.P. Ry. Co. in holding that the statutory provision authorizing interlocutory appeal of an order denying a motion for summary judgment based on a claim against “a member of the electronic or print media,” which was enacted in 1993, applied to a claim against a journalist involving an article published in an online magazine). By the same token, high-speed rail was unimaginable when the Legislature passed the 1907 statute at issue here. But if technology had accelerated such that high-speed rail became available in 1908, no one would have thought that the Legislature would need to pass another statute to accommodate it. We agree with the dissent that courts must give a statutory provision the ordinary meaning that it had at the time it was enacted. Post at 6 (Huddle, J., dissenting). The 1907 statute’s text may have been capacious, but it was not unclear. 16 Additionally, the dissent misapplies the interpretive principle involving the effect of a statutorily defined term’s common usage, arguing that such common usage is “the most significant element of the definition’s context.” Id. at 10 (quoting ANTONIN SCALIA & BRYAN A. GARNER, READING LAW: THE INTERPRETATION OF LEGAL TEXTS 232 (2012)). Ironically, in emphasizing the importance of context, the dissent ignores the context of the principle it espouses. That principle is simply a presumption against “counterintuitive definitions,” such that “[t]he normal sense of [the defined term] and its associations bear significantly on the meaning of ambiguous words or phrases in the [statutory] definition.” SCALIA & GARNER, supra, at 232. Neither Miles nor the dissent contends that any of the words or phrases in the statutory definition of “interurban electric railway company” is ambiguous. Nor is the definition “counterintuitive”—the Legislature did not enact the equivalent of a statute defining the word dog to include all horses. See id. at 232 n.29 (citing Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage 258 (3d ed. 2011)). The dissent uses the common meaning of “interurban” not to clarify ambiguous terms in a statutory definition, but to change the meaning of unambiguous terms. Of course, we may not rewrite statutes to broaden their applicability beyond what the plain language encompasses. The United States Supreme Court recently opined as much in analyzing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, which made it unlawful to make certain calls using an “autodialer.” Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid, 141 S. Ct. 1163, 1167 (2021). The Act defines an autodialer as equipment with the capacity “to store or produce telephone numbers to be called, 17 using a random or sequential number generator” and “to dial such numbers.” 47 U.S.C. § 227(a)(1). Rejecting the argument that the Act applies to newer technology with “the ‘capacity to dial numbers without human intervention,’” the Court held that Congress “did not define an autodialer as malleably as [the respondent] would have liked” and instead focused specifically on “random or sequential number generator technology.” Duguid, 141 S. Ct. at 1172–73. That reasoning is instructive here. We could not interpret Chapter 131 of the Transportation Code to apply to a corporation constructing a railway for the operation of a steam-powered locomotive, which would require us to ignore the statute’s focus on an “electric railway.” But nothing in Chapter 131’s language limits its applicability to only the “small, singletrain, streetcar-based operations” Miles describes. The Texas Central Entities’ proposed railway is an “electric railway between municipalities in this state for the transportation of . . . passengers,” as Section 131.012 requires. Cf. Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 40 (2001) (construing the Fourth Amendment “in the light of what was deemed an unreasonable search and seizure when it was adopted” and holding that the use of thermal imaging from outside the target residence constituted a “search” that was “presumptively unreasonable without a warrant” (citation omitted)). The Legislature used broad language that, again, contains no limitation on the speed of the trains that would transport passengers along those electric railways. Moreover, Miles necessarily uses inconsistent interpretive lenses to argue that the Texas Central Entities are neither railroad companies (legal entities “operating a railroad”) nor interurban electric railway 18 companies. As to the latter, he relies on the state of affairs when Chapter 131 was enacted in its original form. As to the former, he argues that a railroad company cannot include entities that have not yet laid any track, which wholly ignores the historical context in which railroads were granted eminent-domain authority. While we need not decide whether the Texas Central Entities are railroad companies, the manner in which “historical context” is considered should not be massaged to effectuate a desired outcome. It should be consistently applied across the board. We also note that, according to Miles, Chapter 131 applies to a kind of train “that has ‘been extinct in Texas since 1948.’” The dissent agrees, opining that Chapter 131 extends only to a mode of transportation that was “virtually annihilated” by the mid-1930s. Post at 6–7 (Huddle, J., dissenting). But nothing in the statute limits its application in this way. Moreover, under that view, Chapter 131 has remained on the books yet served no purpose for the last seventy-four years. And notably, the statute was recodified in 2009 “as a part of the state’s continuing [nonsubstantive] statutory revision program,” the purpose of which was “to make the law . . . more accessible and understandable by,” among other things, “eliminating repealed, duplicative, expired, and executed provisions.” Act of May 11, 2009, 81st Leg., R.S., ch. 85, § 1.01, 2009 Tex. Gen. Laws 153, 153. In light of this recent recodification, the dissent’s assertion that we have “resurrect[ed]” the statute rings hollow. Post at 2 (Huddle, J., dissenting). Indeed, leaving Chapter 131 on the books as part of this statutory revision 19 program makes little sense if it is as outdated and useless as Miles and the dissent claim. Next, Miles cites various Transportation Code provisions that specifically apply to high-speed rail but are not contained in Chapter 131. Specifically, Section 111.103 authorizes the Texas Department of Transportation to adopt safety standards for high-speed rail systems, defined as “passenger rail service capable of operating at speeds greater than 185 miles per hour,” TEX. TRANSP. CODE § 111.103(a)–(b); Section 112.204 requires a high-speed rail operator to implement security standards, id. § 112.204; and Section 199.003 prohibits the Legislature from appropriating money to pay costs associated with “high-speed rail”—defined in that section as “intercity passenger rail service that is reasonably expected to reach speeds of at least 110 miles per hour”—“operated by a private entity,” id. § 199.003(a)–(b). We fail to see how the existence of statutory provisions applicable to high-speed rail, a term that is defined differently depending on the provision, somehow indicates that it does not fall within the scope of the “electric railway” that is the subject of Section 131.012’s grant of eminent-domain authority, particularly when nothing in those provisions is incompatible with Chapter 131. Finally, Miles asserts that the Legislature’s 1989 enactment, and 1995 repeal, of the High-Speed Rail Act demonstrates that Chapter 131 cannot encompass the Texas Central Entities and their proposed railway. We disagree. That Act established a state agency to award a franchise to a private entity to construct, operate, and maintain a highspeed rail facility, and it gave the agency the authority to exercise the 20 power of eminent domain. See Act of May 29, 1989, 71st Leg., R.S., ch. 1104, § 1, 1989 Tex. Gen. Laws 4564, 4564–65 (repealed 1995). As the Texas Central Entities argue, the Legislature essentially created a public–private partnership with the Act’s enactment and then dissolved that partnership with the Act’s repeal. It did not purport to restrict eminent-domain authority granted by other statutes. 6 And it is telling that, in arguing that the Texas Central Entities do not qualify as “railroad companies”—which also have eminent-domain authority under the Transportation Code—Miles does not rely on the High-Speed Rail Act or contend that the grant of eminent-domain authority to a railroad company does not encompass high-speed rail. But we see no principled basis to conclude that a “railroad company” includes a highspeed rail operator while an “interurban electric railway company” does not. 7 6Arguing that “[o]ther intervening changes in the law further cut against [our] conclusion,” the dissent erroneously relies on a 2009 constitutional amendment requiring “a two-thirds vote of each house of the legislature to grant the power of eminent domain to an entity (public or private).” Post at 15 n.18 (Huddle, J., dissenting); TEX. CONST. art. I, § 17(c). The amendment erects barriers against conferring eminent-domain authority going forward, but it places no restrictions on existing authority at the time of its adoption. And the amendment easily could have done so; for example, it could have required the Legislature to ratify existing delegations of authority or added restrictions on the future exercise of that authority. It did not. Far from supporting the dissent’s subversion of Chapter 131’s plain language, the amendment reflects a conscious choice to leave existing eminent-domain authority intact and unaltered. By the same token, the dissent’s assertion that the High-Speed Rail 7 Act “would have been unnecessary if any private entity could simply charter as an interurban” and invoke eminent-domain authority is simply incorrect. 21 In sum, we hold that Section 131.012’s plain, unambiguous language confers eminent-domain authority on the Texas Central Entities. While we resolve doubts about the scope of eminent-domain power in favor of the landowner, none are presented here. 2. Denbury and “Reasonable Probability of Completion” Miles argues that, even if a high-speed rail operator could be an interurban electric railway company with eminent-domain authority under Chapter 131, neither of the Texas Central Entities may qualify as such a company merely by filing a charter purporting to be one. See Denbury I, 363 S.W.3d at 204 (“A private enterprise cannot acquire unchallengeable condemnation power [as a common carrier] merely by checking boxes on a one-page form and self-declaring its common-carrier status.”). Citing Denbury I and Denbury Green Pipeline–Texas, LLC v. Texas Rice Land Partners, Ltd., 510 S.W.3d 909 (Tex. 2017) (Denbury II), Miles contends that a private entity asserting eminentdomain authority “must demonstrate a ‘reasonable probability,’ through objective evidence, that . . . it will produce the public good for which such authority is sought.” He argues that the Texas Central Entities have failed to satisfy this “reasonable probability” test because they cannot Post at 15 (Huddle, J., dissenting). The Act created a public–private partnership for funding the high-speed rail project that was contemplated at that time and eventually abandoned. But as noted, the Act had no effect on other eminent-domain statutes. For example, if Amtrak were seeking to exercise eminent-domain authority as a railroad company to operate highspeed rail, one could not plausibly argue that the enactment and repeal of the High-Speed Rail Act forecloses that authority. In other words, the repeal of the High-Speed Rail Act surely does not prevent “railroad companies” from operating high-speed rail. 22 raise a fact issue, let alone conclusively establish, that the project “has even a ‘reasonable probability’ of success.” While both the Texas Constitution and our precedent preclude an entity from obtaining condemnation authority by checking a box, they do not support the reasonable-probability-of-completion test Miles proposes, which would constitute an unwarranted sea change in eminent-domain law with farreaching consequences. In Denbury I, we examined the Natural Resources Code’s grant of eminent-domain authority to a common carrier, defined in pertinent part as a person who “owns, operates, or manages . . . pipelines for the transportation of carbon dioxide . . . to or for the public for hire.” 363 S.W.3d at 197 (quoting TEX. NAT. RES. CODE § 111.002(6)). We explained that a person’s common-carrier status under that provision hinges on the anticipated pipeline’s serving the public, a result mandated not only by the statute’s language but also by the Texas Constitution’s prohibition against the taking of private property for private use. Id. at 200. And for a pipeline to “serve the public[,] it cannot be built only for the builder’s exclusive use.” Id. We thus held that “for a person intending to build a CO2 pipeline to qualify as a common carrier under Section 111.002(6), a reasonable probability must exist that the pipeline will at some point after construction serve the public by transporting gas for one or more customers who will either retain ownership of their gas or sell it to parties other than the carrier.” Id. at 202 (internal footnotes omitted). Relatedly, we held that the pipeline owner’s “mere assertions of the possibility of public use” were insufficient to meet that standard, particularly in the face of record evidence suggesting the owner “would 23 transport gas only for its own tertiary recovery operations.” Denbury II, 510 S.W.3d at 914–15. On remand, the owner adduced the objective evidence required to establish a reasonable probability that the pipeline would, at some point after construction, serve at least one unaffiliated customer. Id. at 917. We agree with Miles that, under Denbury I, the Texas Central Entities do not qualify as interurban electric railway companies with associated eminent-domain authority merely by claiming as much in their charters, the equivalent of “checking a box.” However, there is no dispute that the Texas Central Entities (1) were actually chartered for the statutorily authorized purpose of “constructing, acquiring, maintaining, or operating lines of electric railway between municipalities in this state for the transportation of freight, passengers, or both freight and passengers,” TEX. TRANSP. CODE § 131.012; and (2) are engaged in activities in furtherance of that purpose. Nor is there any question that the proposed railway is for “public use.” See TEX. CONST. art. X, § 2 (“Railroads heretofore constructed or which may hereafter be constructed in this state are hereby declared public highways, and railroad companies, common carriers.”); see also West v. Whitehead, 238 S.W. 976, 978 (Tex. App.—San Antonio 1922, writ ref’d) (“If a railroad invoking the power of eminent domain is to be a highway, or a common carrier, and open to the promiscuous and uniform use of the public, such facts conclusively make it a public use . . . .”). 8 Miles’s