City of St. Louis v. St. Louis R. Co.

• Decision Date: 21 June 1886
• Citation: 89 Mo. 44,1 S.W. 305
• Parties: CITY OF ST. LOUIS v. ST. LOUIS R. CO.
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

1 S.W. 305

89 Mo. 44

CITY OF ST. LOUIS v. ST. LOUIS R. CO.

Supreme Court of Missouri.

June 21, 1886.

MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS — POLICE REGULATIONS — STREET RAILWAYS.

An ordinance requiring the street railway company to report to the city quarterly the number of trips made, and number of passengers carried, and punishing by fine the carrying of more than 18 passengers on the average, is a regulation reasonable in its nature, and is binding and valid.

Appeal from St. Louis court of appeals.

Action to recover penalty for the violation of a city ordinance. Judgment for defendant, and appeal therefrom by plaintiff.

L. Bell and A. C. Clover, for the City. Smith P. Gault, for appellant, St. Louis R. Co.

RAY, J.

The defendant was prosecuted and fined $500 before a police justice of the city of St. Louis, for refusing to make to the city register the report required by section 11 of article 4 of chapter 31 of the Revised Ordinances of said city, approved March 29, 1881, which section is as follows:

"Sec. 11. It shall be the duty of each and all of the street railroad companies in the city of St. Louis to report, under oath, to the city register, between the first and fifteenth days of the months of July, October, January, and April of each year, by the president, secretary, or superintendent, the number of trips made and passengers carried over the road of which the person making the report is an officer, during the preceding three months, ending on the last day of the months of June, September, December, and March; and any failure to make the report required by this section shall subject the street railway company so offending to a fine of not less than five hundred dollars. It shall be the duty of the city register, if said reports show that any of said companies have carried an average of over eighteen persons per trip to each car since their last previous return, to report such company to any of the police justices, and such company shall be subject to a fine of not less than three hundred dollars for the first offense, and a fine not less than five hundred dollars for each subsequent offense."

The case was appealed to the court of criminal correction, where, on January 27, 1883, on a trial anew, the defendant was discharged. After motion for a new trial overruled, plaintiff was allowed an appeal to the St. Louis court of appeals, where the judgment was reversed, (14 Mo. App. 221,) and an appeal prosecuted here by defendant.

The agreed statement of facts shows that the books of the defendant contained the information necessary to enable it to make the required reports, but that it failed and omitted so to do, and the question is whether the provision of the ordinance requiring said report is valid and effectual against defendant. Defendant's counsel urge the objection that the second provision of said section is unreasonable and illegal, as a regulation of defendant, and that the first and second provisions are so mutually connected with, and dependent on, each other, as conditions, considerations, or compensations for each other, as to warrant a belief that the city council intended them as a whole, and that, therefore, they cannot be divided, but must stand or fall together. While this is a sound rule of interpretation or construction of statutes, we are not fully satisfied of its applicability to the section in question. It does not, we think,...