Court Opinion

ID: 9639584
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:24:03.815633+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:20.098213
License: Public Domain

*132Case, J.
(dissenting). I am of the opinion that the statute does not authorize the Board of Public Utility Commissioners to permit a railroad company to discontinue all transportation of passengers and at the same time retain its franchise as a common carrier and transport freight thereunder.
The State may rightly require of a common carrier that as a condition of receiving and retaining its charter it shall run trains for the transportation of persons. That much was conceded at the argument. The appellant railroad company holds its franchise under the authority of the Railroad Act which, by B. 8. 48:12-99, provides: "Every railroad, company shall start and run trains for the transportation of persons and property at regular limes■ to be fixed by public noticeT italicize those words because the presence of' them in the enfranchising statute, which appellant accepted and under which it continues to transport property, distinguishes this case from the decisions and the reasoning of many of the cited cases in the federal courts and in the courts of sister states, and undoes much of appellant’s argument. Clearly the statute (1) mandatorily requires the running of trains for the transportation of (2) persons and (3) property (4) on a fixed schedule. That dual application to persons and to property is neither arbitrary nor inept. Where there are persons there is freight. Conversely, if there were no persons there would bo no freight. And regard must be had for the element of public policy, of which the Legislature alone is the judge, in compelling a railroad company to provide, and to be constantly ready to provide, both transportations. The transportation of freight is and has been the more profitable of the two operations, but by the statute the one is a necessary concomitant of the other.
The Legislature having so ordained, it could, of course, remove or vary the mandate. It is the contention of the appellant that the Legislature did that when it-created the Board of Public Utility Commissioners and invested the Board with certain powers. The basic authority given to the Board of *133Public Utility Commissioners is in B. 8. 48:2-13, which provides:
“The board shall have general supervision and regulation of and jurisdiction and control over all public utilities as hereinafter in this section defined and their property, property rights, equipment, facilities and franchises so far as may be necessary for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this title.
“The term ‘public utility’ shall include every * * * steam railroad * *
I suggest that the authority to supervise and regulate a utility does not include the power to relieve the utility from the elemental functions which it is the duty of the Board to supervise and regulate. If the Board may authorize the discontinuance of passenger service with the retention of the railroad franchise, it may likewise authorize the termination of the freight service;' and if it may terminate either branch of the service it may terminate both branches under like conditions and with like effect; the test being, according to the argument, whether the service is, on the one hand, required, in the opinion of the Board, by public convenience and necessity and, on the other hand, is profitable or unprofitable to the railroad. Nowhere in any of the statutes is there a stated purpose that the Board may permit a railroad completely to cease operations of either of the two primary functions for which it was chartered. The order under appeal permitted a reduction in the transportation of persons to the utmost extent short of absolute termination. It retained one car each way on five days of the week, with no service on Saturday or Sunday—a skeleton service which barely met the charter mandate that passenger trains should be run at regular times to be fixed by public notice. That car is literally a single car, known as a “rail motor” with capacity of thirty miles per hour as top speed.
It is said that the authority contended for was given in paragraphs B. 8. 48 :2-23 and —24. These paragraphs respectively provide:—
R. 8. 48:2-23.
“The board may, after hearing, upon notice, by order in writing, require any public utility to furnish safe, adequate and proper ser*134vice and to maintain its property and equipment in such condition as to enable it to do so.”
R. S., 48:2-24.
“If any public utility shall discontinue service and the board after hearing upon notice shall find and determine that service should be resumed, the board may order that service be resumed forthwith or on such date as it may fix.”
There is nothing in either of those provisions which anticipates a complete discontinuance of either of the two fundamental functions of a railroad company, namely, the transportation'of persons and the transportation of property. Every paragraph of the statute should be given its proper setting and -be construed with respect to its context. Article 2 of the statute is divided into three divisions designated, respectively, “A,” “B” and “C.” “A” has the caption “Jurisdiction” and consists of three sections, 13, 14 and 15, from which I have quoted the pertinent provision in section 13, supra. “B” is captioned “Powers” and embraces sections 16 to 29, inclu1 sive, within which are sections 23 and 24, last quoted above. Section 16 is sub-captioned “Supervisory and regulatory powers in general,” and sections 17 to 29 are, as a reading of them will indicate, a particularization of those supervisory and regulatory powers. Section 23 provides that the Board may require a utility to furnish safe, adequate and proper service, and section 24 provides that if any utility shall discontinue service the Board may order it resumed. Without doubt the services here referred to are, in the case of a railroad, the multifarious services incidental to the transportation. of-persons and property; items of service that come within the field of regulation and control. Nothing short of a radical departure from the purpose and spirit of the statute would permit the words “discontinue service” in section 24 to be otherwise interpreted. The construction given by the Board of Public Utility Commissioners under the present application was that it could, and accordingly it did, order the discontinuing of certain trains hut that it could not, and consequently it did not, make an order discontinuing all passenger transportation. That was a ruling within the meaning of the *135act; and, if in the light of future events the board should hereafter determine that those discontinued trains should be restored, an order to resume that service would be within the specific authority of section 24.
Every question presented on this appeal was considered by the Court of Errors and Appeals in the determination of O’Connor v. Board of Public Utility Commissioners, 129 N. J. L. 263 (E. & A. 1942), and was specifically mentioned either in the opinion of the court or in the dissenting opinion filed with respect thereto. That decision is on all fours with the facts and the law of this ease and is squarely against the contention of the appellant here. On the principle of stare decisis the decisión should not be disturbed except for the most cogent reasons. Cf. Colligan v. 680 Newark Ave. Realty Corp., 131 N. J. L. 520, 532 (E. & A. 1943). Not only so, but the decision, made in 1943, construed the statute which is determinative of the ease, and since that time seven Legislatures have sat without amending the statute in this respect or otherwise expressing a view inconsistent with the interpretation of the statute as so rendered. The non-exercise of the amendatory power in the intervening period is indicative of legislative acquiescence in that judicial interpretation. State v. Moresh, 122 N. J. L. 77, 80 (E. & A. 1938). I do not enter upon the controversy whether meritoriously the body which has the power to give the desired relief ought to do so. My whole position is that the Board of Public Utility Commissioners has not that power; that the Legislature, and it alone, has the power and that the appeal for relief should be, but has not been, made to it.
Appellant argues under its first point that the O’Connor case is not sound and should be overruled. The argument is made of necessity. It undertakes to draw distinctions between this case and that; but there are no substantial distinctions.
Under that point it is also contended that the holdings in sister states are contrary to the determination in the O’Connor case. An examination of the cases cited in support of that *136argument discloses that almost all are capable of being distinguished without conflict with the fundamentals of the O’Connor decision. It is not within the compass of this memorandum to analyze all of the citations so presented. A few will suffice:
Commonwealth v. Fitchburg Railroad Company, 12 Gray 180 (Mass. 1858). A few lines, which we italicize, reproduced from that opinion will show the inapplicability of it to the present issues—“The precise question therefore before us is, whether the running of regular passenger trains was, under the facts admitted by the demurrer, a legal duty? Neither the statutes under which the respondents hold their franchises, nor the general laws regulating railroad companies, in terms impose upon the respondents such duty.”
West Penn Rys. Co. v. Public Utility Commission, 135 Pa. Super. 89, 4 A. 2d 545 (1939). The opinion quotes and relies upon the following provision of the Pennsylvania statute conferring authority upon the Public Utility Commission:— “Upon approval of the commission, evidenced by its certificate of public convenience first had and obtained, and upon compliance with existing laws, and not otherwise, it shall be lawful: * * * (d) for any public utility to dissolve, or to abandon or surrender, in whole or in part, any service, right, power, franchise, or privilege * *
Benson, et al., v. Maloy, 141 Md. 398, 118 A. 852 (1922). The specific statutory authority forming the groundwork for that decision included this language:—“The provisions of the next preceding section forbidding the construction by any common carrier, railroad corporation, or street railroad corporation, of a railroad * * * or the exercise by any such common carrier * * * of any franchise or right * * * without the permission and approval of the commission first obtained, and empowering the commission to grant such permission and approval whenever it shall after due hearing determine that such construction or such exercise of the franchise or privilege is necessary or convenient for the public service, shall likewise apply to the abandonment or discontinuance in *137whole or in part by any common earner, railroad corporation, * * * of the exercise of any such franchise or right, in so far as it is then actually being exercised for the public service * * $ »
Collins v. Public Service Commission, 94 W. Va. 455, 119 S. E. 288 (1923), related to the reduction of a number of round trips to be made in passenger train service between certain cities, not to the complete termination of that service.
Marshall v. Bush, 102 Neb. 279, 167 N. W. 59 (1918), turned upon the attempt of the State of Nebraska to compel a railroad to transport passengers, at a loss, for a mileage compensation limited to a two cent fare.
Appellant’s second point is that the order of the Public Utilities Commission in this case violates Article I, paragraphs 1 and 20 of the New Jersey Constitution. The first-named constitutional provision assures all persons of the right to acquire, possess and protect property, and the second prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Those constitutional provisions do not operate against an act done with a person’s consent and may not be used to protect a railroad company from complying with the condition to which it has impliedly agreed and under which it operates and retains its franchise.
Appellant’s third and final point is that to compel the operation of passenger trains in this case denies the carrier the benefit of due process guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and also amounts to the placing of an undue burden on interstate commerce in violation of Article I, Section 8 of that Constitution. One of the United States Supreme Court decisions quoted at length in support of that point is Railroad Commission v. Eastern Texas Railroad Company, 264 U. S. 79, 68 L. Ed. 569 (1924). That decision went upon the attempt of the Texas Railroad Commission to prevent the defendant railroad company from dismantling and abandoning its road because it had found operation improfitable. The court held that the usual permissive charter of a railroad company does not give *138rise to any obligation on the part of the company to operate its road at a loss and if at any time it develops with reasonable certainty that future operation must be at a loss the company may discontinue operation and get what it can out of the property by dismantling the road. “To compel it to go on at a loss, or to give up the salvage value, would be to take its property without the just compensation which is a part of due process of law.” It needs no analysis to distinguish that situation from the one existing here.
A further citation listed by appellant in support of its argument is Chesapeake Ohio Railway Company v. Public Service Commission of the State of West Virginia, 242 U. S. 603, 61 L. Ed. 520 (1917). There the Court of Appeals of the State- of West Virginia had refused to suspend or vacate an order of the Public Service Commission of that state requiring the installation and maintenance of passenger service on a branch railway line. The United States Supreme Court, reviewing that decision, held that “in legal contemplation, the branch.line was devoted to the transportation of passengers, as well as of freight, even though actually used only for the latter. An obligation to use it for both was imposed by law, and so could not be thrown off or extinguished by any act or omission of the railway company. It follows that the order, instead of enlarging the public purpose to which the line was devoted, does no more than to prevent a part of that purpose from being neglected.”
Dealing directly with the allegation that railroad property was being taken without due process of law because a train was ordered run at a pecuniary loss Mr. Justice (later Chief Justice) White, speaking for the United States Supreme Court, said in Missouri Pacific Railway Company v. Kansas, 216 U. S. 262, 54 L. Ed. 472, 479 (1909) :
“It may not be doubted that the road, by virtue of the charter under which the branch was built, was obliged to carry passengers and freight, and therefore, as long as it enjoyed its charter rights, was under the inherent obligation to afford a service for the carrying of *139passengers. In substance, this was all the order commanded, since it was confined to directing that the road put on a train for passenger service.”
A review of the cases on the contentions that the order of the Board was so arbitrary and unreasonable as to amount to a denial of the due process and equal protection guaranteed bjr the Pourteenth Amendment, and that, since the loss arising from the operation must be paid from revenues derived from interstate commerce, the order constituted a burden upon that commerce in violation of the commerce clause of the United States Constitution will be found in Southern Railway Co. v. South Carolina Public Service Commission, 31 F. Supp. 707, at 711, et seq. (Dist. Ct. E. D. South Carolina 1940).
The point is not well made.
Appellant seeks support for its position in the fact that at the hearing by the Board there was no protestants except railroad employees. I attribute no force to that contention. The issue, as I see it, does not lie in public support or opposition but .in’the inherent absence of authority on the part of the Board to put a complete end to passenger transportation.
If, however, the participation or lack of it by the public in the controversy may be considered important, it is well to look at the procedure. The general public was not really put on notice. The company advised the Board of Public Utility Commissioners that it proposed to terminate all transportation of passengers on the Penns Grove Branch, a line extending 20.3 miles through a sparsely settled country, occupied by fourteen small communities. The Board issued an order directing the railroad, company:to show cause why the proposed withdrawal of the service should not be deemed in violation of law. Notice was posted in the railroad trains in question and at the stations of that branch, places which, according to the railroad contention, were patronized by exceedingly few people. I find no proof of other notice. The order was made August 24, 1949. The hearing was on September 12, 1949— less than three weeks from the date of the order. The time began during the period when, of all the year, people are most *140apt to be away on vacation, and ended a little more than a week after Labor Day. The opportunity for crystallization of sentiment and for organization of opposition was slight even if the inhabitants of the area had, from the nature of the proceeding, apprehended that there was a duty upon them to engage counsel or otherwise enter opposition. So this little group of small communities, without adequate notice of what was afoot, in the midst of the summer season, possibly indifferent to the outcome, is made the channel for reopening and reversing the decision of our court of last resort on this very important question. I suppose that, all things considered, the effort by a railroad company to be relieved of a charter obligation without going to the Legislature could hardly have had a more auspicious opportunity. . But this decision will reach far beyond that little country branch. It establishes for all railroads and against all communities that a railroad company may, by order of the Board of Public Utility Commissioners, be relieved of its statutory duty to transport passengers. It must follow from this, as I have already suggested, that a railroad company may in like manner be relieved of its statutory obligation to transport freight, and that if this is true with regard to one or either, it is trae with regard to both; and at the same time the company may retain its franchise subject to rejuvenation—a real threat to potential railroad competition. All this notwithstanding the Legislature has said that the duty of a railroad is to transport both persons and property at regular times and has by inaction during seven years indicated its acquiescence in the decision of our court of last resort that the Board of Public Utility Commissioners is without authority to relieve from that duty.
To summarize:—Our statute requires a railroad, as a condition of its franchise, to transport both persons and property. It has given to the Board of Public Utility Commissioners the authority to supervise and regulate railroads in the performance of those irreducible functions. The authority to supervise and regulate of course assumes the performance of the duty to transport—else there would be nothing to super-*141rise or regulate. Supervision and regulation embrace the maintenance of stations, the employing of agents, determination of the number of trains and the amount of rates and all the other incidents of operation. But the Legislature has never delegated to the Commission the power to permit a railroad to cease operating either or both of those fundamental functions and still retain its franchise. In all the wealth of citations, state and federal, I have not discovered one which rules against the right of a state to maintain that position; nor have I discovered one which concedes to the federal authorities the right to relieve a railroad, in such an instance, of the duty to transport passengers and to retain to it a franchise to carry freight. Colorado v. United States, 271 U. S. 153, 70 L. Ed. 878, 46 Sup. Ct. 458 (1926), sustained the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission to permit a railroad to completely abandon the operation of a branch, but that is.not our case. What the Interstate Commerce Commission would do if confronted with the present problem, we do not know. I am satisfied it would do nothing unless provided with more extensive and detailed proofs than are in the present record; but that touches upon the powers of the federal commission and upon the economic status, with neither of which my position is concerned. I do not entertain the view that because the Interstate Commerce Commission, acting under federal powers and in the control of commerce between the states, may override a state statute, our Board of Public Utility Commissioners, subject to the limitations upon its delegated authority, has the same power.
Those are my reasons for voting to affirm the judgment below.
Mr. Justice Wachenfeld concurs in the foregoing dissenting opinion.
For reversal—Chief Justice "Vanderbilt, and Justices Hei-ier, Oliphant, Burling and Ackerson—5.
For affirmance—Justices Case and Wacheneeld—2.