Terminal Taxicab Company v. Charles Kutz

• Citation: 60 L.Ed. 984,241 U.S. 252,36 S.Ct. 583
• Decision Date: 22 May 1916
• Docket Number: No. 348,348
• Parties: TERMINAL TAXICAB COMPANY, Incorporated, Appt., v. CHARLES W. KUTZ, Oliver P. Newman, and Louis Brownlow, Commissioners of the District of Columbia, Constituting as such Commissioners the Public Utilities Commission of the District of Columbia, et al
• Court: United States Supreme Court

241 U.S. 252

36 S.Ct. 583

60 L.Ed. 984

TERMINAL TAXICAB COMPANY, Incorporated, Appt.,

v CHARLES W. KUTZ, Oliver P. Newman, and Louis Brownlow, Commissioners of the District of Columbia, Constituting as such Commissioners the Public Utilities Commission of the District of Columbia, et al.

No. 348.

Argued May 2 and 3, 1916.

Decided May 22, 1916.

Mr. G. Thomas Dunlop for appellant.

Mr. Conrad H. Syme for appellees.

Mr. Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court:

This is a suit to restrain the Public Utilities Commission of the District of Columbia from exercising jurisdiction over the plaintiff. The Commission was created and its powers established by a section (§ 8) of an appropriation act, divided into numbered paragraphs. Act of March 4, 1913, chap. 150, § 8, 37 Stat. at L. 938, 974. By ¶2 of the section 'every public utility is hereby required to obey the lawful orders of the Commission,' and by ¶1 'public utility' embraces every common carrier, which phrase in turn is declared to include 'express companies and every corporation . . . controlling or managing any agency or agencies for public use for the conveyance of persons or property within the District of Columbia for hire.' Steam railroads, some other companies, and the Washington Terminal Company, are declared not to be within the words. The main question is whether the plaintiff is a common carrier under the definition in the act. The bill was dismissed by the supreme court, and the decree was affirmed by the court of appeals. 43 App. D. C. 120.

The facts are agreed. The plaintiff is a Virginia corporation, authorized by its charter, with copious verbiage, to build, buy, sell, let, and operate automobiles, taxicabs, and other vehicles, and to carry passengers and goods by such vehicles; but not to exercise any of the powers of a public service corporation. It does business in the Dis- trict, and the important thing is what it does, not what its charter says. The first item, amounting to about thirty-five hundredths of the whole, is done under a lease for years from the Washington Terminal Company, the owner of the Union Railroad Station in Washington, which we have mentioned as excluded from the definition of common carriers. By this lease the plaintiff has the exclusive right to solicit livery and taxicab business from all persons passing to or from trains in the Union Station, and agrees in its turn to provide a service sufficient in the judgment of the Terminal Company to accommodate persons using the station, and is to pay over a certain percentage of the gross receipts. It may be assumed that a person taking a taxicab at the station would control the whole vehicle both as to contents, direction, and time of use, although not, so far as indicated, in such a sense as to make the driver of the machine his servant, according to familiar distinctions. The last facts, however, appear to be immaterial and in no degree to cast doubt upon the plaintiff's taxicabs, when employed as above stated, being a public utility by ancient usage and understanding (Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113, 125, 24 L. ed. 77, 84), as well as common carriers by the manifest meaning of the act. The plaintiff is 'an agency for public use for the conveyance of persons,' etc.; and none the less that it only conveys one group of customers in one vehicle. The exception of the Terminal Company from the definition of common carriers does not matter. The plaintiff is not its servant and does not do business in its name or on its behalf. It simply hires special privileges and a part of the station for business of its own.

The next item of the plaintiff's business, constituting about a quarter, is under contracts with hotels by which it agrees to furnish enough taxicabs and automobiles within certain hours reasonably to meet the needs of the hotel, receiving the exclusive right to solicit in and about the hotel, but limiting its service to guests of the hotel. We do not perceive that this limitation removes the public character of the service, or takes it out of the definition in the act. No carrier serves all the public. His customers are limited by place, requirements, ability to pay, and other facts. But the public generally is free to go to hotels if it can afford to, as...