Court Opinion

ID: 9418524
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:29:21.492161+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:04.780806
License: Public Domain

*271Mr. Justice Sutherland,
dissenting.
I think the injuries alleged to have been sustained by complainants are not such as to afford the basis for a legal remedy. Complainants are interested only in the sense that the acquisition of the rights here in question by their competitor will enable the latter to absorb a larger share of the business. That is not enough to constitute a remediable interest.
Before Transportation Act, 1920, the New York Central would have been free to acquire these terminals without the consent of the Commission. If it had done so, its gain of business with the resulting loss to complainants would have been the same; but it would be inadmissible to assert that complainants might have maintained a suit to annul or enjoin the acquisition on the ground of that injury. “The effort of a carrier to obtain more business . . . proceeds from the motive of self-interest which is recognized as legitimate.” United States v. Illinois Central R. R. Co., 263 U. S. 515, 523. See Johnson v. Hitchcock, 15 Johns. (N. Y.) 185.
It is claimed, however, that Transportation Act, 1920, so alters the rule as to give a right of action to complainants where none existed before. I am unable to perceive any sound basis for the conclusion. That act, so far as this question is concerned, requires the carrier, as a prerequisite to an acquisition of the character here under consideration, to secure the authorization of the Commission, which that body may grant if “ it will be in the public interest.” The mere effect of such acquisition upon the business of competing lines is no more to be considered since the Act of 1920 than it was prior to the passage thereof. It is the public, not private, interest which is to be considered.
The complainants have no standing to vindicate the rights of the public, but only to protect and enforce their *272own rights. Redress for public grievances must be sought by public agents, not by private intervention. Home Telephone Co. v. Railroad Commission, 174 Mich. 219. The right of the complainants to sue, therefore, cannot rest upon the alleged violation of a public interest, but must rest upon some distinct grievance of their own. Loss of business, or of opportunities to get business, attributable to the activity or increase of facilities on the part of a competitor is not enough. Transportation Act, 1920, lays down no new or additional rule by which the question, What constitutes a legal or equitable right, interference with which may give rise to an action? may be tested; and the determination of that question must still rest upon general principles of jurisprudence. See Peavey & Co. v. Union Pacific R. Co., 176 Fed. 409, 417. In Railroad Co. v. Ellerman, 105 U. S. 166, 174, this Court held that a private complainant may not be heard by a court except for an “invasion of some legal or equitable right. If he asserts that the competition of the railroad company damages him, the answer is, that it does not abridge or impair any such right. If he alleges that the railroad company is acting beyond the warrant of the law, the answer is, that a violation of its charter does not of itself injuriously affect any of his rights. The company is not shown to owe him any duty which it has not performed.”
If it were conceded that the acquisition of the terminals by the New York Central was in the public interest, I suppose it would not be contended that complainants had any standing to interfere on the ground that their opportunities for obtaining business jhad been impaired. And, since they are without legal right to intervene to redress a public grievance, the contrary fact that the acquisition will not be in the public interest cannot avail them. Their complaint must stand or fall upon the nature of their own grievance. A private injury for which the law *273affords no remedy, cannot be converted into a remediable injury merely because it results from an act of which the public might complain. In other words, the law will afford redress to a litigant only for injuries which invade his own legal rights; and since the injuries here complained of are not of that character and do not result from the violation of any obligation owing to the complainants, it follows that they are without legal standing to sue.
The decision of the Court here proceeds upon the theory that the injury complained of is a denial of equality of treatment in the use of the terminals; but I do not understand this to be the gravamen of the bill. The complaint is of inequality of opportunity to get business — not of opportunity to use the terminals. Complainants’ access to the use and enjoyment of the terminal facilities acquired by the New York Central, remains the same in respect of any business they may obtain. Interstate Commerce Act, § 3-(3), (4), as amended by Transportation Act, 1920, c. 91, 41 Stat. 479. The Commission granted the authorization only upon condition that the neutrality of the terminals in their handling of traffic should be preserved.1 If their use be lessened, therefore, it will not be because access to the terminals has been, or is in danger of being, restricted, but because, with less business, there will be less occasion to use them. An illustration may be helpful: Suppose, instead of these terminal facilities, the acquisition had been of a line of railroad running west from Chicago, which, prior thereto, had been neutral and *274whose business had been distributed without favor among the several eastern lines terminating at that city. It is manifest that the effect of such an acquisition would be, as it is here, to enable the New York Central to absorb more of the traffic of the railroad so acquired than theretofore and, consequently, to lessen that received by other parallel lines running east from Chicago. In that situation, could any of such lines maintain a suit to annul the authorization of the Commission? It seems to me not; and I can see no difference in principle between the case supposed and that with which we are dealing.
I am authorized to say that MR. Justice McReynolds and Mr. Justice Sanford concur in this dissent.

 Among other conditions is the following:
“ 2. The present neutrality of handling traffic inbound and outbound by the Junction and River Road organization shall be continued so as to permit equal opportunity for service to and from all trunk lines reaching Junction rails, without discrimination as to routing or movement of traffic which is competitive with the traffic of the Central, and without discrimination against such competitive traffic in the arrangement of schedules.”