Louisville Co v. Behlmer

• Decision Date: 28 March 1898
• Docket Number: No. 585,585
• Citation: 42 L.Ed. 889,18 S.Ct. 502,169 U.S. 644
• Parties: LOUISVILLE & N. R. CO. et al. v. BEHLMER
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

169 U.S. 644

18 S.Ct. 502

42 L.Ed. 889

LOUISVILLE & N. R. CO. et al.

v BEHLMER.

No. 585.

March 28, 1898.

Claudian B. Northrop, for the motion.

Ed. Baxter and Jas. W. Barnwell, opposed.

Mr. Chief Justice FULLER delivered the opinion of the court.

Henry W. Behlmer filed a petition before the interstate commerce commission, which resulted in an order requiring theL ouisville & Nashville Railroad Company and other companies to abstain from charging, demanding, collecting, or receiving any greater compensation in the aggregate for transportation on hay or other commodities carried by them, under circumstances and conditions similar to those appearing in the case, from Memphis, Tenn., to Summerville, S. C., to that contemporaneously charged and receivef for the transportation of hay and other commodities from Memphis to Charleston, S. C. The companies having failed to comply with that order, Behlmer filed his petition in the circuit court of the United States for the district of South Carolina, setting out the action before the commission, and the failure of the companies to comply with the order, and prayed for a writ of injunction or other proper process restraining the companies from continuing in their violation and disobedience to said order.

On final hearing the circuit court entered a decree dismissing the bill. 71 Fed. 835. Behlmer appealed to the circuit court of appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and that court reversed the decree of the circuit court, and directed that the order of the interstate commerce commission be enforced. 42 U. S. App. 581, 83 Fed. 898.

An appeal was then allowed and perfected to this court, which operated as a supersedeas, and Behlmer now moves the court to declare the appeal not to have that effect, or to vacate the supersedeas resulting from the allowance of the appeal and the approval of the bond tendered.

The sixteenth section of the act to regulate commerce (24 Stat. 379, c. 104), as amended by the act of March 2, 1889 (25 Stat. 855, c. 382), under which resort to the circuit courts could be had for the enforcement of lawful orders or requirements of the interstate commerce commission, provided that: 'When the subject in dispute shall be of the value of two thousand dollars or more, either party to such proceeding before said court may appeal to the supreme court of the United States, under the same regulations now provided by law in respect of security for such appeals; but such appeals shall not operate to stay or supersede the order of the court or the execution of any writ or process thereon.'

At the date of the passage of these acts the rapid growth of the country, and the steady increase of its litigation, had so congested the docket of this court that years frequently elapsed before appeals and writs of error could be heard. When, then, the interstate commerce commission was created, and provision made for the enforcement of its orders by the circuit courts, while appeals were allowed from the decrees of those courts to this court, it was the legislative will that such appeals should not suspend the operation of the decrees appealed from. It is quite true that if the circuit court reversed the order of the commission, and dismissed the petition, the question of superseding such a decree might not be material; but, as the section provided that either party might appeal, the inhibition on the effect of the appeal applied alike to either.

The primary object of the judiciary act of March 3, 1891, was to relieve this court of the overburden of cases which impeded the prompt administration of justice. McLish v. Roff, 141 U. S. 661, 12 Sup. Ct. 118. Accordingly all cases in which the judgments and decrees of the circuit courts of appeals were made final by the act can...