Chicago, RI & P. Ry. Co. v. United States

• Decision Date: 08 June 1925
• Docket Number: No. 3091-349.,3091-349.
• Parties: CHICAGO, R. I. & P. RY. CO. et al. v. UNITED STATES et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Panama Canal Zone

6 F.2d 888 (1925)

CHICAGO, R. I. & P. RY. CO. et al. v. UNITED STATES et al.

No. 3091-349.

District Court, N. D. Texas, Dallas Division.

June 8, 1925.

Lassiter, Harrison & Pearson, of Fort Worth, Tex., M. G. Roberts, A. B. Enoch, of Chicago, Ill., and Goree, Odell & Allen, of Forth Worth, Tex., for plaintiffs.

P. J. Farrell and D. W. Knowlton, both of Washington, D. C., for Interstate Commerce Commission.

Blackburn Esterline, of Washington, D. C., Asst. Sol. Gen., for the United States.

R. C. Fulbright, of Houston, Tex., for Houston, Dallas, and Oklahoma Cotton Exchanges, interveners.

Before FOSTER, Circuit Judge, and ESTES and ATWELL, District Judges.

ATWELL, District Judge.

The bill seeks an interlocutory restraining order, and the writer called to his assistance Circuit Judge FOSTER and District Judge ESTES. Under the amendment to the Judiciary Act of February 13, 1925 (43 Stat. 936), it is necessary that the cause on its merits must be tried before three judges; therefore all counsel during the hearing agreed that the hearing should be considered as a hearing on the merits. The record made before the Interstate Commerce Commission was introduced. There were some additions to that testimony.

Complaint is made because the order of the Interstate Commerce Commission to use the all rail rate from Oklahoma to New England points as a relating rate for the promulgation of a rail, water, and rail rate between the same termini; that is to say, the Commission found that it would cost 4 cents to insure the part water rate, and it therefore ordered the same rate for rail, water, and rail as for all rail, less 4 cents. It is maintained that this is not the fixing of a reasonable rate in the maner and form authorized by the law, and that there was no sufficient evidence before the Commission to ascertain whether the all rail rate was a reasonable rate, and also to ascertain whether the rail, water, and rail rate would be reasonable; therefore that the rate ordered is arbitrary and unjustifiable. It is also maintained that the Commission was without power to fix a rate partly by rail and partly by water.

1. The Interstate Commerce Act (Act Feb. 4, 1887, amended June 29, 1906, April 13, 1908, June 18, 1910, May 29, 1917, Aug. 10, 1917, and February 28, 1920) applies to common carriers engaged in "the transportation of passengers or property wholly by railroad, or partly by railroad and partly by water when both are used under a common control, management, or arrangement for a continuous carriage or shipment." Section 1, par. 1, subdivision A (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, § 8563).

A part of paragraph 3 of section 15 of the act (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, § 8583) reads as follows: "The Commission may, and it shall whenever deemed by it to be necessary or desirable in the public interest, after full hearing upon complaint or upon its own initiative without a complaint, establish through routes, joint classifications, and joint rates, fares, or charges, applicable to the transportation of passengers or property, or the maxima or minima, or maxima and minima, to be charged (or, in the case of a through route where one of the carriers is a water line, the maximum rates, fares, and charges applicable thereto), and the divisions of such rates, fares, or charges as hereinafter provided, and the terms and conditions under which such through routes shall be operated; and this provision, except as herein otherwise provided, shall apply when one of the carriers is a water line."

Paragraph 13 of section 6 (Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1923, § 8569) provides: "When property may be or is transported from point to point in the United States by rail and water through the Panama Canal or otherwise, the transportation being by a common carrier or carriers, and not entirely within the limits of a single state, the Interstate Commerce Commission shall have jurisdiction of such transportation and of the carriers, both by rail and by water, which may or do engage in the same, in the following particulars, in addition to the jurisdiction given by the act to regulate commerce, as amended June 18, 1910."

Then follow subdivisions (a), (b), (c), and (d), which authorize the Commission to establish physical connection between lines of a rail carrier and a dock; to establish through routes and maximum joint rates between and over such rail and water lines; to establish proportional rates or...