Opinion ID: 1487571
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The telegraph company is justified in refusing to restore the discontinued service of race track news.

Text: The telegraph company based its refusal to restore the service on Federal Communication's Tariff Regulation 219(8) infra. McBride's brief disavows any contention that this regulation is unreasonable and at the hearing stated that for the purposes of this litigation it is, as claimed by the telegraph company, to be deemed valid. As his brief states it, the issue is not the reasonableness of Tariff Regulation No. 219 but whether appellant can compel restoration of service improperly denied him. [1] (Emphasis supplied.) So far as this case concerns this regulation, we are not presented with the question of constitutional right considered in such a case as New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, at page 278, 52 S.Ct. 371, at page 374, 76 L.Ed. 747, where, the court determined the lack of constitutionality of a regulation which has the effect of denying or unreasonably curtailing the common right to engage in a lawful private business. (Emphasis supplied). Regulation 219, in paragraph (8), provides: Facilities furnished under this tariff shall not be used for any purpose or in any manner directly or indirectly in violation of any federal law or the laws of any of the states through which the circuits pass or the equipment is located, and the telegraph company reserves the right to discontinue the service to any drop or connection or to all drops and connections when it receives notice from federal or state law enforcing agencies that the service is being supplied contrary to law. (Emphasis supplied.) The important factor in the regulation is that it is the service being supplied by the telegraph company over its wires through any drop which it may discontinue on receiving notice that it is violating the law. It is not necessary that there be a guilty participating of the sender or intermediate transmitter of the messages to the drop. The guilty use of the drop in receiving the messages is enough to show an illegal use of the wires' service. Bookmaking of race track bets is illegal under Section 337a and Section 182 of the California Penal Code. McBride's racing news from the race tracks of other states was sold to a California corporation, Consolidated Publishing Co. of Los Angeles. Through the latter's direction, the out of state race track news was received through the drops in various places in California. McBride claims that the transmission of such news is a legitimate business under a California decision, People v. Brophy, 49 Cal.App.2d 15, 120 P.2d 946. For the purposes of this appeal we assume that, so far as concerns McBride, he was engaged in a legitimate business in sending the race track news from the eastern tracks and that Consolidated Publishing Company in its participating in its transmission committed no wrongful act. Such facts are not relevant to the contention here that the restoration of the service was properly denied by the telegraph company because it was advised by California law enforcement officers that the recipients of the news were bookmakers using the receiving drops in making racing bets, thus causing the telegraph company to supply service violating the California law. The telegraph company was notified by the Attorney General for California in writing that such illegitimate use of the drops was being made in several cities in California and by the Sheriff of Kern County, California, that such use was being made in the city of Bakersfield, California. McBride does not complain that the places of such illegal misuse are not sufficiently described, but that the statement of the notices of illegal use are not substantiated. We do not agree that the notifying officers are required to supply to the telegraph company the probative facts to be adduced in court in the trial of the cases of violation stated in the notices. McBride's complaint contained two causes of action. We can see no essential difference between them. In both he states that the telegraph company should be required by order of the court to continue to supply plaintiff with such facilities. (Emphasis supplied.) He contends, however, that his second cause of action requires the telegraph company to disregard the notices of the law enforcement officers because they concern a past wrongdoing and treat it as beginning de novo a litigation for the supplying of the telegraphic and drop services which the company refuses him. The effect of such a construction would make nugatory the provisions of Section 219(8). A new illegal use would follow to be stopped only long enough for the bringing of another such suit as here. The process of law violation would continue indefinitely with only minor stoppages by an impotent Attorney General. The telegraph company may rely on the Attorney General's and the county sheriff's notices as sufficient to justify the telegraph company's refusal to restore the services, which, as both complaints describe it, would be a continuing of past services. The order denying the preliminary injunction is affirmed.