Court Opinion

ID: 6911053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-23 22:22:15.128031+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:06:30.775970
License: Public Domain

SANBORN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I have been unable to discover any satisfactory reason for deciding that the division of the freight revenue in suit based on Flinton, Illinois, was unlawful. I agree that if the applicable supplement to Division Sheet 100 adding Flinton as a gateway for traffic from the Southwest to points on the Missouri-Illinois Railroad Company is ambiguous with respect to the division of revenues on such traffic, the conclusion of the District Court should not be overturned. But the fact that the division of revenue of which the appellee complains is unfair to it would not, in the absence of ambiguity, justify a court in amending the applicable Division Sheet as supplemented.
It seems to me that the record shows that the Missouri-Illinois Railroad Company became a party to the Division Sheet in suit upon the understanding, adequately expressed, that revenues derived from traffic from the Southwest destined for points on its line and received at either Kellogg or Flinton should be divided 22% to it and 78% to the carrier or carriers which transported the shipments to either of those gateways. Apparently, Kellogg and Flinton were the only points through which traffic from the Southwest could move to points on the Missouri-Illinois Railroad. The expert witnesses who testified seem to have been in substantial accord with respect to the proposition that if it had been intended to exclude Flinton as a basing point for the division of revenue on shipments such as those in suit, there should have been an exception in paragraph (b) of Item 66-B of the applicable supplement to the effect that divisions via Kellogg or Flinton would not apply on traffic from the Southwest interchanged at East St. Louis, Illinois, or St. Louis, Missouri.
*174I agree that the District Court had jurisdiction of this action, and that the claim of the appellee was not barred or extinguished by limitations. I am, however, of the opinion that there was an inadequate basis for determining that the Missouri-Illinois Railroad Company’s division of the joint revenue on the traffic in suit was unlawful. The judgment appealed from should, I think for that reason only be reversed.