Court Opinion

ID: 8836746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 16:26:57.429534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:05:05.555369
License: Public Domain

Billings, J.,
(dissenting.) Complainant submits as his case that by the legislative action of the state the obligation of his contract is impaired. In such a case I understand the supreme court of- the United States recognizes it as the constitutional mandate that that court shall by its own judgment interpret the contract, and decide as to its being impaired. This, therefore, is not a case where the construction of a charter by the court of last resort of a state is necessarily a part of the charter, and conclusively binding. The federal court must still measure the obligation and the effect of the hostile legislation. Jefferson Branch Bank v. Skelly, 1 Black, 436, 443. In the case of Water-Works Co. v. Rivers, 115 U. S. R. 674, 681, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 273, the supreme court have construed this charter in respect to the point here involved While I agree with the circuit judge that the construction by the state supreme court is contrary to that by the United States supreme court in the Rivers Case, and that with reference to every other class of cases the construction of a charter by the state court of last resort would be obligatory upon the United States supreme court, and upon this court, I nevertheless think that the views of the supreme court in the Rivers Case should still control the action of this court as to the meaning of the charter already declared by it, and that the complainant should have a decree perpetuating the inj unction.
As to the meaning of the expression “contiguous persons.” Contiguous may have so broad a meaning as to make it proper to speak of the entire city of New Orleans as contiguous to the Mississippi river. This is not the meaning. The use of the word compels us to stop somewhere. There is no middle point. I think7 the word was meant, in the charter, to include only the proprietors who are actually riparian; that is, only those proprietors whose land by actual contact adjoins the river.