Railroad and Warehouse Commission of Minnesota v. Duluth Street Ry Co

Citation273 U.S. 625,71 L.Ed. 807,47 S.Ct. 489
Decision Date11 April 1927
Docket NumberNo. 228,228
PartiesRAILROAD AND WAREHOUSE COMMISSION OF MINNESOTA et al. v. DULUTH STREET RY. CO
CourtUnited States Supreme Court

Messrs. J. B. Richards, of Duluth, Minn., and E. C. Carman and Clifford L. Hilton, both of St. Paul, Minn., for appellants.

Mr. Oscar Mitchell, of Duluth, Minn., for appellee.

Mr. Justice HOLMES delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is an appeal from a decree of the District Court in favor of the plaintiff, the appellee, that prohibits the enforcing of a rate for the carriage of passengers established by the appealing Commission and authorizes the plaintiff to charge not exceeding six cents for carrying passengers within the City of Duluth, subject to conditions not needing mention. 4 F.(2d) 543. The Commission's order allowed a charge of six cents for a single fare but required the plaintiff to issue tickets or tokens at not to exceed twenty-five cents for five rides. The difference, it will be seen, is somewhat narrow and the only question that we have any need to consider is whether the plaintiff had a right to come into the Court of the United States when it did, and whether its suit was not at least premature.

The plaintiff, an existing street railway company, elected to comply with and come under to terms of Chapter 278, General Laws of Minnesota 1921, by filing the declaration and consent required. Thereby it gained a right to apply to the above-mentioned Commission to fix the rates of fare to be charged in place of the five cents to which it had been limited before it came in under the Act. It applied to the Commission; the City of Duluth was made a party; and after a hearing the Commission determined the value of the plaintiff's property used and useful in the street car service in Duluth, found that a return of seven and one-half per cent. was a reasonable rate of return, and fixed the fares that we have stated as sufficient to yield that rate. This was on July 13, 1922. Five days later the plaintiff filed this bill, setting up that the Commission's order was confiscatory and in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

The objections to the bill are based on the provisions of the Minnesota statute for an appeal. Both the city and the street railway are given the right to appeal to the District Court of the county, and there the whole matter, fact and law, is to be tried before three judges, without a jury. They are to find all material facts, including the fair value of the property and the reasonable rate of return, and to affirm, modify or reverse the order of the Commission, as may be required by law, the Commission being directed to conform to their judgment in its final order. There is a further resort to the Supreme Court. It is said that plaintiff was bound to exhaust the appeal thus granted before going elsewhere, and that it could not cut off the similar right of the City of Duluth. It is said that this is so not only on general principles but is binding on the plaintiff by its assent to the statute, which, it is said, constituted a contract and amounted to an acceptance of the statutory proceedings as the only mode of relief.

The Supreme Court of the State has declared the proceedings in Court to be judicial not legislative in their nature, and therefore consistent with the constitution of the State, Duluth v. Railroad & Warehouse Commission, 167 Minn. 311, 209 N. W. 10. See Janvrin, Pet'r, 174 Mass. 514, 55 N. E. 381, 47 L. R. A. 319. If then the State Court should...

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