Lancaster v. Gulf, C. & S.F. Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 28 April 1924
• Docket Number: 59.
• Citation: 298 F. 488
• Parties: LANCASTER et al. v. GULF, C. & S.F. RY. CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Texas

298 F. 488

LANCASTER et al. v. GULF, C. & S.F. RY. CO.

No. 59.

United States District Court, S.D. Texas, Galveston Division.

April 28, 1924

George Thompson, of Fort Worth, Tex., and Gresham & Willis, of Dallas, Tex., for complainants.

C. K Lee, of Fort Worth, Tex., and G. B. Ross and Terry, Cavin &amp Mills, all of Galveston, Tex., for defendant.

HUTCHESON District Judge.

This is an application for injunction filed under leave of the court of their appointment by the receivers of the Texas & Pacific Railway Company against the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Railway Company, invoking paragraphs 18, 19, and 21, added to section 1 of the Interstate Commerce Act by section 402 of the Transportation Act of February 28, 1920 (Comp. St. Ann. Supp 1923, Sec. 8563). It is alleged that in violation of paragraphs 18 and 22 of said act the defendant, without having first obtained the certificate of the Commission as required therein, has undertaken to construct an extension of its line of railroad in Dallas county.

The defendant denies that it is its purpose to construct an extension of its line of railway, and declares that it is merely constructing an industrial track, which, they say, is not only not an extension of its line of railway, as prohibited in paragraph 18, but is that character of construction which by paragraph 22 is withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Commission, and as to which no certificate is required.

The matter was referred to a master for hearing and advisory report, and after a full and exhaustive hearing he reported in substance that there was no dispute as to the facts; that the real controversy between the parties arose out of the different constructions put by them upon the terms 'extension of line of railroad' and 'industrial track' used in the act.

After setting out in a clear, fair, and full way a resume of the material facts, the master announced the conclusion that the proposed construction constituted, not an industrial track, but an extension of the line, which required a certificate, and recommended that the injunction prayed for issue. This conclusion of the master, which he supported by an excellently reasoned argument, is excepted to with vigor by the defendant, and in oral argument and in learned and exhaustive briefs the matter has been argued before me. In addition to the main point as to the 'nature of the track,' defendant raised before the master the following points, all of which were decided against it:

(1) That complainants have no right to sue, because whether a track construction requires a certificate or not is an administrative question, which must first be determined by the Commission before a suit can be maintained.

Without discussing the matter at length, or reviewing the authorities, I think it clear that the master disposed of this point correctly, because the act expressly withdraws from the jurisdiction of the Commission 'industrial tracks' and declares that the courts shall issue an injunction against 'extensions of lines' made without certificate at the suit of any interested party. When an act of Congress limits the jurisdiction of an administrative body, and expressly directs recourse, not to that body, but to the courts, for relief for failure to comply with the act, the court applied to cannot decline to determine whether the relief should be granted on the ground of the necessity for prior administrative construction, because to do so would abrogate the most important function of the court, the construction of statutes, in favor of a body having no jurisdiction whatever to construe, but merely to administer, them.

The cases arising under the rate provisions of the Commerce Act have no application here, as those provisions are confided to the Commission, not for construction as to their meaning, but for administrative application. In such matters, unless the Commission has made an express application, there is no justiciable question arising. In short, the act, as to these features, is not complete until it has been administratively applied, and the judicial construction of it in that kind of case is in reality not a construction of the act of Congress alone, but a construction of that act as applied to the administrative acts of the Commission.

(2) It was also argued before the master that the suit was one of a local nature, and that the venue lay with the District Court of the Northern District of Texas. As I understand it, this point, as is also the point made vainly before the master that the receivers of the Texas & Pacific Railway Company had no authority to sue, is abandoned here; but, whether abandoned or not, I thoroughly agree with the master in his disposition of these matters, and will myself overrule these two contentions.

Defendant also asserts laches against complainants. The master on this point ruled against it, and in this ruling I concur, not only for the reasons stated by him in his excellent report, that there were no fact conditions that would give rise to such a principle, but because of the conclusive consideration of law that the matter is one of a quasi public nature, as to which the parties at interest, complainants here, represent, not truly themselves, but the public, in whose interest the act was passed, and whose right to punish for, or prevent, the doing of a criminal act is not lost or affected by laches. Laches is purely a personal matter, arising in equity somewhat out of the same considerations as those which are responsible for the maxim 'clean hands,' the principle of estoppel, etc., and it should have no application to a public suit of this character. Besides, the very structure of the act shows that injunction will lie against the operation of the track, as well as against its construction, so that it is not possible for any person to claim a right against injunction springing out of the delay in questioning the construction of a forbidden track, since operation over the track is forbidden equally with construction.

This brings us to the real difficulty in the case, the 'true character of the track' in issue, which difficulty springs out of and is accentuated by the fact that the terms 'extension of line of railroad' and 'industrial track' have no clear and established restrictive definition, either in dictionaries or in railroad practice, which will permit of the case being settled by rule of thumb, but, on the contrary, these terms have a wide latitude of meaning, according to the context in which they are used. Since Congress has not undertaken to define the words used, and since it is plain that they may be, according to the angle of approach, given wide and varied meaning, it is evident that the purpose of the act must be drawn from its entire structure, and that purpose, together with the context in which the words are used, must at the last be the guide to the interpretation of the words at issue.

I think it must be conceded that, if the paramount, overriding purpose of the act was to bring fully within the control of the Commission the matter of steam railroad extensions, constructions, etc., in so far as they affect interstate commerce (State of Texas v. Eastern Texas R.R., 258 U.S. 204, 42 Sup.Ct. 281, 66 L.Ed. 566), and paragraph 22 does not give color or character to the act, but is merely in the nature of a proviso or limitation upon the general grant of power, it follows inevitably that the words in paragraph 18, 'extension of line,' are the words to be construed broadly, and the words in paragraph 22 the words to be construed narrowly. This is the angle of approach of complainants, and from it there is no difficulty in holding a track, such as the one involved in this case is supposed to be, to be an extension line, for as it is described in complainants' brief it is--

'A 'main track' extending into the freight tonnage territory of another carrier seven miles distant from defendant's railroad, and which theretofore has not been served by it; a 'main track' which itself, as appurtenant thereto, has Y-tracks at either terminus (blueprint, Tr. 137), a side track 1,200 feet in length (Tr 114), one 1,500 feet in length (Tr. 115), and a double side track 3,000 feet in length near the Trinity Portland Cement plant (Tr. 130), with 4,900 feet of storage or terminal tracks at Hale (Tr. 126), and with spur tracks leading to and connecting with tracks owned by each of industries in the territory intended to be reached; a 'main track' that is to have the same ruling grade as defendant's main line, and that will be constructed of 75-pound rails as heavy as some of defendant's branch line main tracks (Tr. 405-406), with a right of way owned in fee and of the usual main line width of 100 feet (Tr. 412), which will be fenced (Tr. 398), a line the construction of which will involve heavy fills and deep cuts, with 700 feet of open trestle (Tr. 127), and which will necessitate an undercrossing of the Dallas-Fort Worth Interurban and of the Dallas-Fort Worth pike, and all for an expenditure of a half million dollars, representing a construction cost per mile of more than $71,000; a 'main track' over which there will move a volume of tonnage gauged by an annual revenue of nearly three quarters of a million dollars,...