Court Opinion

ID: 9418131
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:09:45.680892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:15:55.533641
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Fuller,
concurring in reversing the decrees, dissents from the opinion.
I preface what I have to say- with a sketch of the record in these cases, abbreviated from the brief of coünsel.
The Virginia State Corporation Commission was created and its functions, powers, duties and the essentials of its procedure *233were prescribed in detail by the constitution of the State as .well as by statute. It was made primarily a judicial court,of record of limited jurisdiction, possessing also certain special legislative and executive powers.' When it proposed to make a change in a rate of a public service corporation, or otherwise to prescribe a new regulation therefor, the commission .was required, sitting as a court, to issue its process, in the nature of .a rule, against' the corporation concerned, requiring it to appear before the commission at a certain time and place and show cause, if any it could, why the proposed rate should not be prescribed. The judicial question involved on the return to such rule was whether or not the contemplated rate was confiscatory, or otherwise unjust or unreasonable, and in the hearing and disposition of this question the proceedings of the commission as prescribed by law were in every respect the same as those of any other judicial court of record. It issued, executed and enforced its own writs and processes; it could issue and enforce writs of mandamus and injunction; it' punished for contempt, and kept a complete record and docket of its proceedings; it summoned witnesses and compelled their attendance, and the production of.documents; it ruled upon the admissibility of evidence; it certified 'any exception to its rulings; and its judgments, decrees and orders had the same, force and effect as those of any other court of record in the State, and were enforced by its own proper processes. It Was not subject to restraint by any'other state court, and from any and every ruling or decision by it an appeal lay to the Supreme Court of Appeals of the State, and was heard upon the record made for and certified by the commission, exactly as in the base of appeals from any other court; and pending the decision of such appeal the order appealed from might by a supersedeas be suspended in its operation.
Not only do the constitution and laws of Virginia make the commission a judicial court of record by clothing it with all the attributes 'of such a tribunal, but they expressly declare it a court, and require it to proceed only "by due process of law *234and inquire into and determine every judicial question coming before it. It has repeatedly held itself to be a court and subject to all the obligations thereof, and the Supreme Court of Appeals, the highest state judicial tribunal, has formally and expressly so held.
When this court shall have in the manner above indicated fully heard all parties interested, and, proceeding by due process of law as to them, has judicially determined that the proposed rate or regulation is not confiscatory, nor otherwise unjust or unreasonable, then, but not until then, it is authorized by the constitution and laws of Virginia to enter an order prescribing such rate or regulation, from which order an appeal lies to the Supreme Court of Appeals, with, as has been said, the right of suspension by supersedeas pending the appeal. Assuming that the prescribing of the rate after it has been judicially determined to be reasonable is necessarily a legislative act, then the constitution of the State expressly confers upon this commission the legislative power of prescribing a rate after it has judicially ascertained' and decided it to be not below the limit of “reasonable.”
On July 31, 1906, the State Corporation Commission issued and caused to be served a notice to the “steam railroad companies doing business in Virginia and all persons interested,” that, at 12 o’clock noon, on November 1, 1906, at Richmond, the commission would “hear and consider any objections which may be urged against a rule, regulation, order or requirement of the commission fixing and prescribing a maximum rate of charge of two cents per mile for the transportation of passengers over the line of any railroad company in this State, operated by steam, between points within the State of Virginia.”
Accordingly, on November 1, 1906, the appellee companies appeared before the commission, and filed their answers in writing, setting forth why, in their opinion, the proposed, two cent rate would be less than reasonable.
The commission thereupon entered into a most thorough *235hearing of this question of the reasonableness of the proposed rate, in which hearing the appellee companies were represented by counsel and introduced elaborate evidence.
No evidence was taken or considered, save, publicly, in the open sessions of the commission, when appellees were given the fullest opportunity (of which they availed themselves) to be present, to introduce their own testimony, by witnesses and documents, to cross-examine opposing witnesses, to object to the introduction of witnesses or documents, and to except of record to any ruling whatever of the commission.
No evidence was rejected which any railroad company offered. The hearing was continued for several months, and the case was not closed until the companies involved had formally announced, in open ■ court, that they had nothing more to offer.
On April 27, 1907, practically six months after the hearing began, the commission entered its order (which is the basis of appellees’ complaint in this cause), accompanied with an elaborate written opinion. giving the grounds therefor.
By this order certain passenger rates — in no case less than two cents per mile — were prescribed for the defendant railroad companies, to go into effect on July 1,1907, the commission being of opinion, and so deciding, that the rates therein fixed were not confiscatory nor otherwise unjust or unreasonable to said companies.
The appellee companies refused either to obey the order of the commission, or to appeal therefrom, and publication of the order was directed, but before it had been accomplished, and on May 15,1907, appellees filed bills in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Virginia, to enjoin the commission from enforcing its order of April 27, 1907, or taking any other steps therein, and a restraining order was entered enjoining the members of the commission and their clerk from further proceeding in the matter until a motion for an injunction 'pendente lite could be heard, and requiring them to appear before the Circuit Judge in Asheville, North Carolina, *236on June 27, 1907., to show cause why such injunction should not be granted. Appellants entered a special and limited appearance, and filed their joint and separate answers to the rule, in which they denied the jurisdiction of the court.
The cause having been heard on the rule and answers thereto*, the Circuit Judge on July 10, .1907, overruled the objection to the court’s jurisdiction, and granted injunctions pendente lite, as prayed for. Thereupon the defendant, Prentis, filed his demurrer, based on substantially the same grounds as those assigned in the answer to the rule, and the three other defendants filed their joint and separate plea, setting up specifically that the commission is a court within the purview of § 720 of the United States Revised Statutes, and on September 10,1907, by leave-of court, all four of the defendants filed their joint and separate plea of res judicata.
December 26' 1907, the court overruled the demurrer and both pleas, and the defendants declining to answer further, a final decree was on that day entered in each case taking the bills pro confesso, and perpetuating the injunctions, with costs. Thereupon, appeals • were allowed and prosecuted front said final decrees.
In my opinion, a preliminary objection is fatal to the maintenance of these bills. It appears on their face that the appel-lees did not avail themselves of the right of appeal to the Court of Appeals of Virginia, which was absolutely vested in them by the constitution and laws of that Commonwealth. . Such an appeal would have brought up the question of the alleged unreasonableness of the designated rate, and appellees cannot assume that the decision of the commission would necessarily have been affirmed. If reversed or changed to meet appellees’ views, the whole ground of equity interposition would disappear. In such circumstances it is the settled rule that courts of equity will not interfere. The transaction must be complete, and jurisdiction cannot be rested on hypothesis. A fortiori, this must be so where Federal courts are asked to interfere with the legislative, executive or judicial acts of a State, unless *237some exceptional and imperative necessity is shown to exist, which cannot be asserted here.
Moreover, this is demanded by comity, and what comity requires is as much required in courts of justice as in anything else.
“ ‘Comity,’ ” said Mr. Justice Gray in the leading case of Hilton v. Guyot, 159 U. S. 113, 163, “in the legal sense, is neither a matter of absolute obligation, on the one hand, nor of mere courtesy and good will, upon the other. But it is the recognition which one nation allows within its territory to the legislative, executive or judicial acts of another nation, having due regard both to international duty and convenience, and to the rights of its own citizens or of other persons who are under the protection of its laws.”
And as applied to Federal interference with state acts, the observance of this rule of comity should be regarded as an obligation. It is recognized as such by § 720 of the Revised. Statutes:
By the constitution of Virginia the commission is vested with legislative as well as judicial powers, and the. validity of that union of powers has been repeatedly upheld by the highest judicial tribunal of that Commbnwealth — the matter being committed to the determination of the State.' It seems equally true, that whether an adjudication by the commission, on notice and hearing, that proposed rates are reasonable and not confiscatory, may lawfully be had prior to the legislative act of imposing the rates is also a matter for state determination, and at all events that question should, in the first instance, be decided on appeal by the Court of Appeals, I cannot s.ee why the reasonableness and justness of a rate may not be judicially inquired into and judicially determined at the time of the fixing of the rate, as well as afterwards, but that and kindred questions should be tested as provided by this con-, stitution and these laws before the controversy is precipitated into a Circuit ’Court of the United States. Power grows by what it feeds on, and to hold that state railroad companies can *238take their chances for the fixing of rates in accordance with their views in a tribunal provided for that purpose by state constitutions and laws, and then, if dissatisfied with the result, decline to seek a review in the highest court of the State, though possessed of the absolute right to do so, and invoke the power of the Federal courts to put a stop to such proceedings, is, in my opinion, utterly inadmissible and of palpably dangerous tendency.