Detroit Citizens St Ry Co v. Detroit Ry

• Decision Date: 23 May 1898
• Docket Number: No. 236,236
• Citation: 18 S.Ct. 732,43 L.Ed. 67,171 U.S. 48
• Parties: DETROIT CITIZENS' ST. RY. CO. v. DETROIT RY. et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

171 U.S. 48

18 S.Ct. 732

43 L.Ed. 67

DETROIT CITIZENS' ST. RY. CO.

v DETROIT RY. et al.

No. 236.

May 23, 1898.

The plaintiff in error is a street-railway company of the state of Michigan, organized for the purpose of owning and operating lines in the city of Detroit, and is the successor in interest of a similar corporation named the Detroit City Railway. The rights asserted by it arise from an ordinance of the common council of that city passed on November 24, 1862. This provided that the Detroit City Railway was 'exclusively authorized to construct and operate railways as herein provided, on and through [certain specified streets], and through such other streets and avenues in said city as may from time to time be fixed and determined by vote of the common council of the said city of Detroit and assented to in writing by said corporation. * * * And provided the corporation does not assent in writing, within thirty days after the passage of said resolution of the council ordering the formation of new routes, then the common council may give the privilege to any other company to build such route.'

The ordinance provided also that 'the powers and privileges conferred by the provision of this ordinance shall be limited to thirty years from and after the date of its passage.'

Section 2 of the ordinance is only necessary to be quoted, and it is inserted in the margin.¹

There is also inserted in the margin sections 33 and 34 of the tram-railway act.²

By an ordinance passed November 14, 1879, it was provided further that 'the powers and privileges conferred and obligations imposed on the Detroit City Railway Company by the ordinance passed November 24, 1862, and the amend- ments thereto, are hereby extended and limited to thirty years from this date.'

On November 20, 1894, the common council passed an ordinance granting to several third parties the right to construct street railways upon portions of certain streets upon which the plaintiff in error was maintaining and operating street railways, and also the right to construct, maintain, and operate railways on certain other streets, alleys, and public places in the city of Detroit, without giving to plaintiff in error the opportunity to decide whether it would construct the same. The present suit was brought in the circuit court for the county of Wayne and state of Michigan, to enjoin the grantees named in the latter ordinance, and also the city, from acting thereunder, upon the ground that it impaired the contract between the city and the plaintiff in error arising from the ordinances first aforesaid. The bill was dismissed, and, on appeal to the supreme court of the state, the decree of dismissal was affirmed. 68 N. W. 304. From that decree the present writ of error has been duly prosecuted to this court.

There are five assignments of error. They present the contention that the grant to the plaintiff in error was a contract, within the protection of the provision of the constitution of the United States which prohibits any state from passing any law impairing the obligation of a contract, and that the subsequent grant to the defendant in error, the Detroit Railway, was a violation and an impairment of the obligation of that contract.

J. C. Donnelly, H. M. Duffield, and Fred A. Baker, for plaintiff in error.

John B. Corliss, Charles Flowers, and Joseph H. Choate, for defendants in error.

Mr. Justice McKENNA, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.

The controversy turns primarily upon the power of the city of Detroit over its streets,—whether original, under the constitution of the state, and hence as extensive as it would be in the legislature, or whether not original, but conferred by the legislature, and hence limited by the terms of the delegation.

The first proposition is asserted by the plaintiff in error; the second proposition, by the defendants in error.

The provisions of the constitution which are pertinent to the case are as follows:

'The state shall not be a party to or interested in any work of internal improvement, nor engaged in carrying on any such work, except in the expenditure of grants to the state of land or other property.

'There shall be elected annually on the first Monday of April in each organized township * * * one commissioner of highways * * * and one overseer of highways for each highway district.

'The legislature shall not * * * vacate or alter any road laid out by the commissioners of highways, or any street in any city or village, or in any recorded town plat.

'The legislature may confer upon organized townships, incorporated cities and willages, and upon boards of supervisors of the several counties such powers of a local, legislative and administrative character as they may deem proper.'

The supreme court of Michigan, in its opinion (68 N. W. 304), interprets these provisions adversely to the contention of plaintiff in error, and, reviewing prior cases, declares their harmony with the views expressed. 'The scope of the earlier decisions,' the court said, 'is clearly stated by Mr. Justice Cooley in Board of Park Com'rs v. Common Council of Detroit, 28 Mich. 239. After stating that the opinion in People v. Hurlburt, 24 Mich. 44, had been misapprehended, Justice Cooley said: 'We intended in that case to concede most fully that the state must determine for each of its municipal corporations the powers it should exercise and the capacities it should possess, and that it must also decide what restrictions should be placed upon these, as well to prevent clashing of action and interest in the state as to protect individual corporators against injustice and oppression at the hands of the local majority; and what we said in that case we here repeat,—that while it is a fundamental principle in this state, recognized and perpetuated by express provisions of the constitution, that the people of every hamlet, town, and city of the state are entitled to the benefits of local self-government, the constitution has not pointed out the precise extent of local powers and capacities, but has left them to be determined in each case by the legislative authority of the state, from considerations of general policy, as well as those which pertain to the local benefit and local desires; and in conferring those powers it is not to be disputed that the legislature may give extensive capacity to acquire and hold property for local purposes, or it may confine authority within the narrow bounds; and what it thus confers it may enlarge, restrict, or take away at pleasure."

This decision of the supreme court of Michigan is persuasive, if not authoritative; but, exercising an independent judgment, we think it is a correcti nterpretation of the constitutional provisions. The common council of Detroit therefore had no inherent power to confer the exclusive privilege claimed by the plaintiff in error.

Did it get such power from the legislature? It is contended that it did, by the act under which the Detroit City Railway Company, the predecessor of plaintiff in error, it succeeded. This act is the tram railway it succeeded. This act is the tram-railways...