Checker Cab Co. v. Romulus Tp.

• Decision Date: 10 October 1963
• Docket Number: Nos. 10,11,s. 10
• Citation: 371 Mich. 232,123 N.W.2d 772
• Parties: CHECKER CAB COMPANY, a Non-Profit Michigan Corporation, and Gordon Wilson, Plaintiffs and Appellees, Board of County Road Commissioners, Intervening Plaintiffs and Appellees, v. TOWNSHIP OF ROMULUS, Wayne County, Michigan, Defendant and Appellant. Eddie KLAZER, John Clark, Garfield Calcaterra, Walter Kamm and Stanley Urban, d/b/a Lorraine Cab Company, Plaintiffs and Appellees, Board of County Road Commissioners, Intervening Plaintiffs and Appellees, v. TOWNSHIP OF ROMULUS, a Minicipal Corporation, Defendant and Appellant.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

Page 772

123 N.W.2d 772

371 Mich. 232

CHECKER CAB COMPANY, a Non-Profit Michigan Corporation, and Gordon Wilson, Plaintiffs and Appellees, Board of County Road Commissioners, Intervening Plaintiffs and Appellees, v. TOWNSHIP OF ROMULUS, Wayne County, Michigan, Defendant and Appellant.

Eddie KLAZER, John Clark, Garfield Calcaterra, Walter Kamm

and Stanley Urban, d/b/a Lorraine Cab Company, Plaintiffs and Appellees, Board of County Road Commissioners, Intervening Plaintiffs and Appellees, v. TOWNSHIP OF ROMULUS, a Minicipal Corporation, Defendant and Appellant.

Nos. 10, 11.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Oct. 10, 1963.

Philip J. Neudeck, Detroit, for appellee Checker Cab Company.

William J. Mullaney, Detroit, for appellee Gordon Wilson.

John P. Cushman, Gen. Counsel, John E. Breen, Detroit, for appellee Board of County Road Commissioners of the County of Wayne, Michigan.

Anthony F. Leone, Allen Park, for defendant and appellant; J. Lynn Fewlass, Detroit, of counsel.

Before the Entire Bench.

SOURIS, Justice (for affirmance).

This appeal by Romulus township is from a decree entered in consolidated suits instituted by two taxicab companies restraining the township from enforcing its taxicab licensing ordinance (Romulus township ordinance No. 35, as amended). Plaintiffs, and other taxicab companies, pick up passengers from, and deliver passengers to, Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, located wholly in Romulus, for transport to and from various destinations principally in and around the metropolitan Detroit area. The Wayne county board of road commissioners, ¹ which owns and operates the airport pursuant to authority granted by the aeronautics code, ² has limited the right to pick up passengers at the airport to only those carriers with which it has entered into 'concession' agreements and has promulgated rules and regulations governing the operations of carriers for hire on the airport premises. The township sought to enforce its taxicab licensing ordinance against those companies granted such concession and whose operations at the airport are subject to the board's rules and regulations.

As the chancellor commented in his opinion, the power of the township to license taxicabs and drivers thereof doing business in the township elsewhere than within the airport is not challenged. The taxicab business affects the health and safety of passengers, motorists, pedestrians, and other persons and property within the township (Lorraine Cab v. City of Detriot, 357 Mich. 379, 98 N.W.2d 607) and may, therefore, be regulated by the township, by licensure or otherwise, pursuant to express legislative authority to adopt ordinances regulating, among other things, health and safety of persons and property. C.L.S.1956, § 41.181 (Stat.Ann.1961 Rev. § 5.45(1)). The plaintiffs contend, however, that the aeronautics code 'preempts' the township from applying any such ordinance to taxicab operations originating at the airport because it authorizes the county to operate and regulate such airports; to adopt rules, regulations and ordinances for the management, government and use thereof; and to grant concessions for goods and services. C.L.S.1956, §§ 259.126, 259.133 (Stat.Ann.1960 Rev. §§ 10.226, 10.233). They contend that such powers have been exercised by the county, through its board of road commissioners, by adoption of rules and regulations governing the operations of carriers for hire while on the airport premises and by execution of concession agreements with certain taxicab companies. Thus, their argument goes, the county's exercise of the powers granted by the aeronautics code so comprehensively covers the operation of taxicabs at the airport that the township is thereby precluded from imposing its license ordinance upon such business.

The township's ordinance is not applicable solely to taxicabs operating from the airport; it is universally applicable to taxicabs conducting business anywhere in the township. We are not, therefore, dealing with a direct attempt by the township to thwart or hinder the operation of taxicabs at the airport by ordinance applicable only to taxicabs authorized by the board to operate therefrom. What the plaintiffs' argument amounts to is that the ordinance otherwise applicable throughout the township may not reach those taxicabs authorized to operate from the airport because it allegedly conflicts with the county's rules and regulations and its concession agreements relating to taxicab service from the airport.

In pertinent part the rules and regulations adopted require consent of the board before a carrier for hire may load passengers at the airport, while any carrier for hire is permitted to enter the airport to discharge passengers. Nothing in the rules and regulations has any relevancy, directly or indirectly, to the licensure of such carriers by any other governmental agency.

The concession agreement, on the other hand, expressly provides that the favored carriers must conduct their operations in 'strict conformity with all pertinent federal, state and local government laws and regulations'...