Grand Trunk Western Railway Company v. Railroad Commission of Indiana
| Decision Date | 15 May 1911 |
| Docket Number | No. 138,138 |
| Citation | 221 U.S. 400,55 L.Ed. 786,31 S.Ct. 537 |
| Parties | GRAND TRUNK WESTERN RAILWAY COMPANY, Piff. in Err., v. RAILROAD COMMISSION OF INDIANA, William J. Wood, Henry M. Dowling, John F. McClure, and the Chicago, Indianapolis, & Louisville Railway Company |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Samuel Parker and Anderson, Parker, & Crabill for plaintiff in error.
[Argument of Counsel from page 401 intentionally omitted] Messrs. E. C. Field and H. R. Kurrie for defendants in error.
This is a suit to secure the annulment or modification of an order of the Railroad Commission of Indiana, directing the installation and use of an interlocking plant at the crossing of two railroads in that state, and apportioning between them the expense of executing the order. The suit proceeds upon the theory that a contract between the owners of the roads, entered into before the enactment of the statute upon which the order rests, imposes upon the junior road all the expense of maintaining and guarding the crossing, in whatever manner may be essential to make its use safe and convenient, and that the order, by imposing a part of the expense of its execution upon the other road, impairs the obligation of the contract, and therefore is void.
The appellate court of the state, having regard to the terms of the contract and to the conditions existing when it was made, twenty-five years before, held that it did not provide for or contemplate any such elaborate system of protecting and guarding the crossing as is involved in the use of an interlocking plant, and therefore that the expense entailed by the order was not within the purview of the contract. And that court, after observing that the statute invested the commission with the authority to make a just, but not an arbitrary, apportionment of the expense, and that the apportionment as made did not appear to be unjust or arbitrary, sustained the order. 40 Ind. App. 168, 81 N. E. 524.
Observing first, that the order is a legislative act by an instrumentality of the state exercising delegated authority (Prentis v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. 211 U. S. 210, 226, 53 L. ed. 150, 158, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 67), is of the same force as if made by the legislature, and so is a law of the state within the meaning of the contract clause of the Constitution (New Orleans Waterworks Co. v. Louisiana Sugar Ref. Co. 125 U. S. 18, 31 L. ed. 607, 612, 8 Sup. Ct. Rep. 741; St. Paul...
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