Court Opinion

ID: 9418276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:18:27.494589+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:59.726348
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice White,
dissenting.
The court now holds that this controversy involves merely a switching privilege and the duty of one railroad not to refuse such privilege to another, or at all events if it permits it to one, to allow it to other roads on terms' of equality. By a necessary inference, therefore, the decision.now made is concerned alone with that subject and does not in any degree whatever as a matter of law involve the right of one railroad company to compel another, to permit it to share in its terminal facilities. If I could bring'my mind, to understand the facts of the controversy .as they are now appreciated by the court, there would be no difficulty whatever on my part in accepting the legal principle which is applied to them. But the difficulty which I have is in the premise of fact upon which the case is decided. In other words, I have found it impossible to escape the conclusion that instead of being one concerning a mere switching privilege, the case is really one involving the using of terminal facilities. Differing only therefore as to an appreciation of the facts I am very reluctant to express a dissent, a reluctance which is greatly increased by the consideration that the view *373of the facts now taken by the court is the one which was adopted by the court below and which was stated by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Strong, however, as is the admonition resulting from this situation, it is not strong enough to overcome the force of my conviction as to what the case really' concerns and to overcome the belief that it is my duty at least to state the fact of my dissent.
Mr. Justice McReynolds took no part in the consideration and decision of this case.