Court Opinion

ID: 7946061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-08 23:20:33.327113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:33:55.774503
License: Public Domain

Montgomery, C. J.
The Detroit City Railway Company obtained a franchise from the city of Detroit in 1863. At that time the city limits were located at Mt. Elliott avenue. In 1885, by amendment of the charter, the city limits were extended to Baldwin avenue. In 1889 an ordinance was passed by the council and accepted by the Detroit City Railway Company, providing for the sale of workingmen’s tickets, so called, 8 for 35 cents during certain hours of the day, good over any of its lines in said city for a single fare. This ordinance also gave the right to the company to extend its double track on Jefferson avenue to the easterly limits of the city of Detroit. The Detroit City Railway Company continued to operate the line until 1890. Its rights and franchises were subsequently assigned to the defendant. A later ordinance imposes the duty of keeping these workingmen’s tickets on sale by conductors. The defendant subsequently purchased a street railway located wholly without the city limits, and maintained under authority of a franchise from the township of Grosse Pointe and the village of Fair-view.
In 1907 the city limits of Detroit were extended to include a large portion of this territory. These two cases were brought to enforce penalties in the one case for refusing to accept a ticket good in the city of Detroit for passage over this last-named territory, and the other to recover a penalty for failure to keep tickets entitling a passenger to ride over this territory from any point in the *462city on sale. The question in each case is therefore whether the requirements of the ordinance of 1889, that passengers should be conveyed to any point in the city limits binds the defendant, as assignee of the Detroit City Railway Company, to transport passengers to the easterly limits of Jefferson avenue as extended, notwithstanding that the defendant company is the assignee of the franchise granted by Grosse Points township and approved by the village of Fairview.
It is the contention of the city that, when the provision was made in the ordinance for transporting passengers anywhere within the city limits, it means the city limits as they may from time to time be fixed. On the other hand, the defendant contends that the defendant occupies the position of an assignee of the Grosse Points Railway Company, and that it is not, as to the railway in the late village of Fairview, an assignee of the Detroit City Railway Company. There are two methods of extending street railways. One is by construction, and the other may be by purchase under section 6448, 2 Comp. Laws. The purchased railway becomes as much a part of the system as does the railroad as constructed. So wé think it after all gets back to the question of whether the real intent of this ordinance was to provide for single fares within the city limits as such limits should from time to time be fixed.
We think it not unreasonable to hold that this mutual contract was made in view of the power of the legislature of the State to increase or diminish the territory within the city, and that neither the city nor the company contemplated that in case of an extension of the lines of the company within the city, either by purchase or acquisition from another company, an increased fare should be demanded. The case of Township of West Bloomfield v. Railway, 146 Mich. 198 (109 N. W. 258, 117 Am. St. Rep. 628), involved a question not entirely dissimilar. In that case the company had contracted that the fare from any point in said township to the city of Detroit and *463vice versa should not exceed the rate then charged by the company from Pontiac and Detroit and vice versa. The company while in competition with another line maintained a fare of 25 cents. It subsequently purchased the competing line, and over the line passing through West Bloomfield increased the fare from Pontiac to Detroit to 35 cents. It was held that the language of the provision that the rate of fare from any point in the township to Detroit should at no time exceed the rate then charged from Pontiac to Detroit and vice versa referred to the company mentioned in the franchise, and it included any line which that company or its assignee might at any time build or purchase.
A case almost on all fours with the case at bar is that of Indiana R. Co. v. Hoffman, 161 Ind. 593 (69 N. E. 399). Its reasoning is convincing, and we think the case should be followed. The case presented does not involve in this view an interference with any vested right of the company as assignee of the Eairview Railway, but resolves itself simply into a question of the construction of the ordinance, and we construe the ordinance to include any street railway constructed or purchased by the defendant which shall be within the city of Detroit as the limits of said city may from time to time be fixed by the legislature.
The convictions are affirmed.
McAlvay, Brooke, Blair, and Stone, JJ., concurred.