Court Opinion

ID: 9625282
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:34:46.707826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:22:05.474024
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE DAVIS:
I dissent.
In the record before us there is no bill of exceptions containing the evidence received at the trial in the lower court. In these circumstances the presumption in this court is that the evidence which we do not have supports at every point the findings made by the trial judge and the judgment entered by him thereon. Warren v. Warren, 127 Mont. 259, 263, 264, 261 Pac. (2d) 364.
At bar the findings are found in the opinion filed by the trial judge as well as in the formal findings of fact and conclusions of law which he made later. Coffman v. Niece, 110 Mont. 541, 544-546, 105 Pac. (2d) 661. These findings, which we accept as the facts of the case reviewed by us here, make it plain that early in 1954 the Great Northern Railway Company asked permission of the Montana Board of Railroad Commissioners to discontinue its trains Nos. 223 and 224, which were then operated by it between Havre, Montana, and Williston, North Dakota, but that upon objection made at the hearing on this application the Board ruled it did not have jurisdiction in the matter. Accordingly it dismissed the application.
This ruling and the order of dismissal which followed were tantamount to an administrative determination by the Board that the Great Northern could do as it pleased about these trains, i. e., that it could discontinue them or not as it saw fit, for the matter was no business with which the Board was in any way concerned. As the majority opinion notes, the order made here by the Board was subject to review under R.C.M. 1947, section 72-125.
But the fact is that the order was not reviewed consistent with that statute or in any other manner; a fact of importance to which the majority gives no weight. The dismissal entered stands yet a matter of record established by the Board itself, *256and by which seemingly it should itself be bound. Moreover, a collateral fact of equal importance, which is also disclosed by the record, is that wholly consistent with this order and certainly in reliance thereon the Great Northern discontinued trains Nos. 223 and 224, of course without consulting the Board again. Indeed, in the face of the order made which told the Great Northern, I emphasize, that these trains were beyond the Board’s jurisdiction, it would have been an idle act, or so it seems to me, to ask that Board a second time to give a permission which it had already said in effect it could neither give nor withhold.
Nevertheless, within a matter of hours after these trains were taken off the Board without notice to the Great Northern and without any hearing at all reversed itself, and summarily ordered the restoration of the very train service over which it had said but a day or two earlier it exercised no authority whatsoever. The Board’s position taken to spell out its jurisdiction to make this latter order is not strengthened by the niceties of the distinction, as I see it, drawn between an interstate train serving Havre, Montana, and Williston, North Dakota, and an intrastate train “operated between Havre, Montana and the Montana-North Dakota State Line.” In either case the Board is speaking of the same trains in fact, however it may describe them. We should deal therefore in my opinion with the substance of the case and not the fiction of counsel.
The comments of the trial judge who heard this suit in the district court are at this point so apt that I quote from his opinion this paragraph: “If the Board of Railroad Commissioners were correct in their ruling that they had no jurisdiction over these trains, then their order to resume running the trains to the North Dakota Line was an attempt to do by indirection something they concede they could not do directly. This cannot be done.”
Here it seems to me we could with propriety end this litigation by affirming the judgment below consistent with the dictates of reason and a sound public policy which ought to *257control. But apparently the law is otherwise that an administrative body like our Board of Railroad Commissioners may change its mind overnight and rule today to the precise contrary of its holding of yesterday. Or at least such is now the earnest argument made at our bar by counsel for the Board, which seemingly the majority opinion accepts.
Accordingly what the Board did in ordering without notice or hearing the restoration of trains Nos. 223 and 224 coupled with the argument pressed upon us by its counsel to sustain that action squarely presents for decision the fundamental question whether the order made and the statute as well upon which it is bottomed, R.C.M. 1947, section 72-123, conform to the mandates of our State and Federal Constitutions, and are therefore valid. I think both are unconstitutional and unquestionably void, and that as the challenge is made here a decision of the question put cannot fairly be avoided.
Specifically I think the order of the Board now challenged and the statute to which that order looks for authority contravene the due process clauses of the Constitutions of both the State of Montana and the United States. U. S. Const. Amend. XIV, section 1; Mont. Const. Art. III, section 27. But I do not find it necessary to concern myself further with the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution; for as I read our own opinion in Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. v. Board of Railroad Commissioners, 76 Mont. 305, 247 Pac. 162, this court has already expressly held that the due process clause of the State Constitution was violated by another statute and an order made thereunder by this same Board, which can not be distinguished from the statute and the order of the Board brought in issue on this appeal. I agree with the trial judge here that the opinion written in that case is sound, its reasoning controlling of the case now before us. The distinction which the majority opinion makes between that precedent in this court and the controversy now submitted for our judgment is too fine for me to grasp or understand. Insofar as *258my search has lead me that distinction finds no. support either in the decisions of this court or elsewhere.
But however that may be and as I see the case in hand the majority opinion cannot stand, unless Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Co. v. Board of Railroad Commissioners, supra, be overruled either by express statement or fair implication. That decision by a unanimous court has, however, stood for thirty years the undenied law of Montana. I would not therefore be willing at this late date to repudiate the statement of the law found there, which heretofore no one has thought unsound, even though I did not myself believe it to be beyond criticism. But of what was there decided I have no criticism to offer. Hence I cannot acquiesce in the views of the majority which point the way to another conclusion; for I think they are in error in disregarding the law of this jurisdiction which has already been heretofore correctly announced upon the point they decide.
? I could add other pertinent authorities, as I read them, which sustain my position. I could extend my dissent here also by analyzing and there suggesting where I think the authorities cited for the Board are pointless, and in truth fortify rather than weaken the conclusion which I have reached. But I have written enough, I am sure, to indicate my view of the constitutional issue which this appeal raises, and which I think the majority opinion incorrectly resolves. Since that view is not, however, to prevail no purpose will be served by an elaboration further of my reasons for the result I find inescapable, which is that I would affirm in its entirety the judgment of the district court here reviewed.