State of Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Company
| Decision Date | 13 May 1907 |
| Docket Number | O,No. 5,5 |
| Parties | STATE OF GEORGIA, by its Attorney General, John C. Hart, v. TENNESSEE COPPER COMPANY and Ducktown Sulphur, Copper, & Iron Company (Limited). riginal |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Ligon Johnson and John C. Hart for complainant.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 231-236 intentionally omitted] Messrs. James G. Parks, Howard Cornick, John H. Frantz, James B. Wright, and Martin H. Vogel for defendants.
This is a bill in equity filed in this court by the state of Georgia, in pursuance of a resolution of the legislature and by direction of the governor of the state, to enjoin the defendant copper companies from discharging noxious gas from their works in Tennessee over the plaintiff's territory. It alleges that, in consequence of such discharge, a wholesale destruction of forests, orchards, and crops is going on, and other injuries are done and threatened in five counties of the state. It alleges also a vain application to the state of Tennessee for relief. A preliminary injunction was denied; but, as there was ground to fear that great and irreparable damage might be done, an early day was fixed for the final hearing, and the parties were given leave, if so minded, to try the case on affidavits. This has been done without objection, and, although the method would be unsatisfactory if our decision turned on any nice question of fact, in the view that we take we think it unlikely that either party has suffered harm.
The case has been argued largely as if it were one between two private parties; but it is not. The very elements that would be relied upon in a suit between fellow-citizens as a ground for equitable relief are wanting here. The state owns very little of the territory alleged to be affected, and the damage to it capable of estimate in money, possibly, at least, is small. This is a suit by a state for an injury to it in its capacity of quasi-sovereign. In that capacity the state has an interest independent of and behind the titles of its citizens, in all the earth and air within its domain. It has the last word as to whether its mountains shall be stripped of their forests and its inhabitants shall breathe pure air. It might have to pay individuals before it could utter that word, but with it remains the final power. The alleged damage to the state as a private owner is merely a makeweight, and we may lay on one side the dispute as to whether the destruction of forests has led to the gullying of its roads.
The caution with which demands of this sort, on the part of a state, for relief from injuries analogous to torts, must be examined, is dwelt upon in Missouri v. Illinois, 200 U. S. 496, 520, 521, 50 L. ed. 572, 578, 579, 26 Sup. Ct. Rep. 268. But it is plain that some such demands must be recognized, if the grounds alleged are proved. When the states by their union made the forcible abatement of outside nuisances impossible to each, they did not thereby agree to submit to whatever might be done. They did not renounce the possibility of making reasonable demands on the ground of their still remaining quasi-sovereign interests; and the alternative to force is a suit in this court. Missouri v. Illinosi, 180 U. S. 208, 241, 45 L. ed. 497, 512, 21 Sup. Ct. Rep. 331.
Some peculiarities necessarily mark a suit of this kind. If the state has a case at all, it is somewhat more certainly entitled to specific relief than a private party might be. It is not lightly to be required to give up quasi-sovereign rights for pay; and, apart from the difficulty of valuing such rights in money, if that be its choice it may insist that an infraction of them shall be stopped. The states, by entering the Union, did not sink to the position of private owners, subject to one system of private law. This court has not quite the same freedom to balance the harm that will be done by an injunction against that of which the plaintiff complains, that it would have in deciding between two subjects of a single political power. Without excluding the considerations that equity always takes into account, we cannot give the weight that was given them in argument to a comparison between the damage...
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