Cleveland, Cincinnati Chicago St Louis Railway Company v. People of the State of Illinois Thomas Jett

• Decision Date: 30 April 1900
• Docket Number: No. 198,198
• Citation: 20 S.Ct. 722,177 U.S. 514,44 L.Ed. 868
• Parties: CLEVELAND, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO, & ST. LOUIS RAILWAY COMPANY, Plff. in Err. , v. PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS ex rel. THOMAS M. JETT
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

177 U.S. 514

20 S.Ct. 722

44 L.Ed. 868

CLEVELAND, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO, & ST. LOUIS RAILWAY COMPANY, Plff. in Err.,

v PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS ex rel. THOMAS M. JETT.

No. 198.

Argued and Submitted March 16, 1900.

Decided April 30, 1900.

This was a petition for a writ of mandamus filed in the circuit court for the county of Montgomery, by the state's attorney for that county, to compel the defendant railway company, which for several years past has operated, and is now operating, a railroad from St. Louis, Missouri, through the county of Montgomery and the city of Hillsboro, the county seat of such county, to Indianapolis, Indiana, to stop a regular passenger train designated as the 'Knickerbocker Special,' at the city of Hillsboro, a sufficient length of time to receive and let off passengers with safety.

The petition was based upon section 26 of an act of the General Assembly of Illinois, entitled 'An Act in Relation to Fences and Operating Railroads,' approved March 21, 1874, which reads as follows:

'Every railroad corporation shall cause its passenger trains to stop upon its (their) arrival at each station advertised by such corporation as a place of receiving and discharging passengers upon and from such trains, a sufficient length of time to receive and let off such passengers with safety: Provided, all regular passenger trains shall stop a sufficient length of time at the railroad stations of county seats to receive and let off passengers with safety.'

The answer of the railroad company averred that the company furnished four regular passenger trains each way a day, passing through and stopping at Hillsboro, and that they amply accommodated the travel, and afforded every reasonable facility to such city; that the Knickerbocker Special was a train especially devoted to carrying interstate transportation between the city of St. Louis and the city of New York; that the travel between these cities had grown to such an extent that it had become necessary to put on a through fast train, which connected with other similar trains on the Lake Shore and New York Central roads, and that it was necessary to put on this train because the trains theretofore run, none of which had ever been taken off, could not, by reason of stopping at Hillsboro and other similar stations, make the time necessary for eastern connections, or carry passengers from St. Louis to New York within the time which the demands of business and inter- state traffic required; that the Knickerbocker Special is not a regular passenger train for carrying passengers from one point to another in the state of Illinois, such traffic being amply provided for by other trains, and that the Knickerbocker Special is used exclusively for interstate traffic from and to points without the state of Illinois; that it is not subject to regulation by the statute of Illinois providing that all trains shall stop at all county seats, and that to subject it to the statutes of the various states through which it passes, requiring it to stop at county seats, would wholly destroy the usefulness of the train, and would impede and obstruct interstate commerce, and that obedience to the statute in question would require it to abandon the train.

A demurrer to this answer was sustained, and the defendant electing to stand upon it as a full defense to the petition, a final judgment was rendered and a peremptory writ of mandamus awarded against the defendant. On appeal to the supreme court of the state this judgment was affirmed. Whereupon the railway company sued out a writ of error from this court.

Messrs. John T. Dye and George F. McNulty for plaintiff in error.

Messrs. E. C. Akin, C. A. Hill, and B. D. Monroe for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice Brown delivered the opinion of the court:

Few classes of cases have become more common of recent years than those wherein the police power of the state over the vehicles of interstate commerce has been drawn in question. That such power exists and will be enforced, notwithstanding the constitutional authority of Congress to regulate such commerce, is evident from the large number of cases in which we have sustained the validity of local laws designed to secure the safety and comfort of passengers, employees, persons crossing railway tracks, and adjacent property owners, as well as other regulations intended for the public good.

We have recently applied this doctrine to state laws requiring locomotive engineers to be examined and licensed by the state authorities (smith v. ALABAMA, 124 u. s. 465, 31 L. ED. 508, 8 sup. Ct. reP. 564), requiring such engineers to be examined from time to time with respect to their ability to distinguish colors (Nashville, C. & St. L. R. Co. v. Alabama, 128 U. S. 96, 32 L. ed. 352, 2 Inters. Com. Rep. 238, 9 Sup. Ct. Rep. 28), requiring telegraph companies to receive despatches and to transmit and deliver them with due diligence, as applied to messages from outside the state (Western U. Teleg. Co. v. James, 162 U. S. 650, 40 L. ed. 1105, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 934), forbidding the running of freight trains on Sunday (Hennington v. Georgia, 163 U. S. 299, 41 L. ed. 166, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1086), requiring railway companies to fix their rates annually for the transportation of passengers and freight, and also requiring them to post a printed copy of such rates at all their stations (Chicago & N. W. R. Co. v. Fuller, 17 Wall. 560, 21 L. ed. 710), forbidding the consolidation of parallel or competing lines of railway (Louisville & N. R. Co. v. Kentucky, 161 U. S. 677, 40 L. ed. 849, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 714), regulating the heating of passenger cars, and directing guards and guard posts to be placed on railroad bridges and trestles and the approaches thereto (New York, N. H. & H. R. Co. v. New York, 165 U. S. 628, 41 L. ed. 853, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 418), providing that no contract shall exempt any railroad corporation from the liability of a common carrier or a carrier of passengers, which would have existed if no contract had been made (Chicago, M. & St. P. R. Co. v. Solan, 169 U. S. 133, 42 L. ed. 688, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 289), and declaring that when a common carrier accepts for transportation anything directed to a point of destination beyond the terminus of his own line or route he shall be deemed thereby to assume an obligation for its safe carriage to such point of destination, unless at the time of such acceptance such carrier be released or exempted from such liability by contract in writing, signed by the owner or his agent. Richmond & A. R. Co. v. R. A. Patterson Tobacco Co. 169 U. S. 311, 42 L. ed. 759, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 335. In none of these cases was it thought that the regulations were unreasonable or operated in any just sense as a restriction upon interstate commerce.

But for the reason that these laws were considered unreasonable and to unnecessarily hamper commerce between the states, we have felt ourselves constrained in a large number of cases to express our disapproval of such as provided for taxing di- rectly or indirectly the carrying on or the profits of interstate commerce. We have also held to be invalid a statute of Louisiana requiring those engaged in interstate commerce to give all persons upon public conveyances equal rights and privileges in all parts of the conveyance, without distinction or discrimination on account of race or color (Hall v. De Cuir, 95 U. S. 485, 24 L. ed. 547), another regulating the charges of railway companies for passengers or freight between places in different states (Wabash, St. L. & P. R. Co. v. Illinois, 118 U. S. 557, 30 L. ed. 244, 1 Inters. Com. Rep. 31, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 4), another requiring telegraph companies to deliver despatches by messenger to the persons to whom the same are addressed, so far as they attempted to regulate the delivery of such despatches at places situated in another state (Western U. Teleg. Co. v. Pendleton, 122 U. S. 347, 30 L. ed. 1187, 1 Inters. Com. Rep. 306, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1126), and still another forbidding common carriers from bringing intoxicating liquors into the state without being furnished with a certificate that the consignee was authorized to sell intoxicating liquors in the county (Bowman v. Chicago & N. W. R. Co. 125 U. S. 465, 31 L. ed. 700, 1 Inters. Com. Rep. 823, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 689, 1062).

Several acts in pari materia with the one under consideration have been before ...