Court Opinion

ID: 9417944
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 20:45:02.490751+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:53.222610
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brown,
dissenting.
I am unable to concur in the opinion of the court in this case. While fully conceding that the legislature is the only judge of the policy of a proposed discrimination, it is not the only judge of its legality. Doubtless great weight will be given to its judgment in that regard, and the legislation will not be held invalid, if it be founded upon a real distinction in principle between persons or corporations of the same class. Upon this principle spark arresters may be required upon locomotives when they are not required upon other smokestacks, because of' their greater liability to communicate fires to adjoining property; so, although other proprietors are not bound to fence their lands, railway companies may be required to do so to prevent the straying of cattle upon their tracks. Upon the same principle gates and guards may be required at railway crossings when the same .would be entirely unnecessary at the crossing of ordinary highways. Other discriminating regula*271tions made necessary by the. peculiar business and danger incident to railway transportation may be readily imagined.
In this case, however, the railway is not pursued,as such, but merely as the proprietor of certain land alongside its track, and no reason can be conjectured why an obnoxious form of weed, growing upon its land, should be moré detrimental than the same weed growing upon adjoining lands. The railway is not made the sole-object of the statutory prohibition by reason of the fact that it is a railway, and-the discrimination against it seems to be purely arbitrary. The only distinction suggested in support of the'ordinance is that the seed of Johnson grass may be dropped from the cars in such quantities as to cause special trouble; but there is not only no evidence of,such fact, but is is highly improbable that the seed of a noxious grass of this kind would be carried upon the cars at all. It is also suggested that the self-interest of owners of farms to keep down pests of this kind might be relied upon to prevent their growth. But this tends merely to show that if the law were made general, it would be more readily obeyed by private land proprietors than by the railway. It may be that railways-are less given to the observance of precautions required of them as neighborhood landowners than the proprietors of individual property, but that does not create a distinction in principle. It merely tends to show that if the law were made general the railway companies would be oftener prosecuted than other proprietors. If Johnson grass growing upon railway tracks be a nuisance, it is equally so. when growing upon the other side of the line fence, and I think the law should be made general to avoid the charge of an arbitrary discrimination. If the land owned by every corporation were held to this liability, while the land of individuals were exempt, the discrimination would be more conspicuously unjust in its appearañee, but scarcely more so in its reality.
Mr. Justice White and Mr. Justice McKenna also dis-, sented.