Haseltoim, County Sol. v. Interstate Stage Lines, Inc.

• Decision Date: 04 May 1926
• Parties: HASELTOIM, County Sol., v. INTERSTATE STAGE LINES, Inc.
• Court: New Hampshire Supreme Court

133 A. 451

HASELTOIM, County Sol.,

v. INTERSTATE STAGE LINES, Inc.

Supreme Court of New Hampshire. Hillsborough.

May 4, 1926.

Transferred from Superior Court, Hillsborough County; Sawyer, Judge.

Information in equity by George I. Haselton, County Solicitor, against the Interstate Stage Lines, Incorporated. To order enjoining defendant from receiving intrastate passengers until it complied with the statute, it excepts. Exception overruled.

Information in equity under Laws 1010, c. 86, as amended by Laws 1021, c. 50 (see P. L. c. 258), to enjoin the defendant from doing intrastate business.

Laws 1919, c. 86, is as follows:

"Sec. 1. Every person, firm or corporation operating any motor vehicle other than a street car upon any public street or way in the business of transporting passengers for hire, and receiving and discharging passengers along a regular route over which the vehicle is operated, is hereby declared to be a common carrier and as such shall be subject to the provisions of this act so far as applicable thereto.

"Sec. 2. No such person, firm or corporation shall conduct the business defined in section 1 of this act along any portion of a public highway unless upon petition and public hearing thereon the Public Service Commission shall determine that the public good requires that such person, firm or corporation should engage in such business and shall have granted permission therefor. The Public Service Commission, by general or special orders, may establish reasonable rules and regulations relating to the speed and operation of such vehicles and the number of passengers to be carried therein, and otherwise safeguarding the public interest; and every such person, firm or corporation shall comply with such rules and regulations. Any order of the commission granting permission under the provisions of this section shall be conditioned upon the petitioner filing, within thirty days after the date of such order or within such longer time as may be specified in said order, and thereafter keeping in full force and effect a good and sufficient bond in such form and with such sureties as may be approved by the commission, providing for the payment of damages caused to any person or property through any default or negligence in the operation of any such motor vehicle, said bond to be in a penal sum equivalent to five hundred dollars for each motor vehicle to be operated and the additional amount of one hundred dollars for each passenger permitted to be carried therein; and no such motor vehicle shall be operated unless such bond shall have been filed and kept in full force and effect. The bond required by this section shall be deemed to include any policy of insurance or indemnity by which the insuring company shall assume the liability defined by this section; provided that such company is authorized to do business in this state.

"Sec. 3. Every city or town within or through which any motor vehicle described in section 1 shall be operated shall have power to make bylaws relating to the licensing of such motor vehicles therein and fixing reasonable license fees therefor; such by-laws to have the same force and effect as by-laws of cities and towns as provided in chapters 40 and 50 of the Public Statutes.

"Sec. 4. Any person, firm or corporation violating any of the provisions of this act shall upon conviction thereof be fined not exceeding one hundred dollars."

This act was amended by Laws 1921, c. 59, by inserting in section 1, after the words "discharging passengers along," the words "or at the termini of," and by imposing the duty of enforcement upon the county solicitor.

The defendant operates a line of busses running daily over a regular route between termini at Boston, Mass., and Manchester, this state, with intervening stopping places at Lowell, Mass., and Nashua, in this state.

Transferred upon the defendant's exception to an order of the court enjoining it from receiving passengers at Manchester for transportation to Nashua, and vice versa, until it complies with the foregoing statute.

George I. Haselton, Co. Sol., of Manchester, for plaintiff.

Ivory C. Eaton, of Nashua, and J. Joseph Hennessy, of Lowell, Mass., for defendant.

SNOW, J. The defendant sets up the unconstitutionality of the amended statute under the commerce clause of the federal Constitution, art. 1, § 8, and also denies its applicability to the situation here. Each of those issues involves the construction of the statute.

1. It may be conceded that the terms of the act are sufficiently broad to include an order to forbid the defendant's Interstate operations except upon compliance with its requirements, and that, if so construed and applied, the defendant would be within the protection of the commerce clause of the federal Constitution. It does not, however, necessarily follow therefrom that an intention to exercise such power over the interstate functions of carriers must be imputed to the Legislature. Such a construction is neither required by the obvious import of the language employed, nor, as we shall see, is it supported by the evidence. Where a statute is fairly susceptible of two interpretations, one rendering it constitutional and one not, that construction will ordinarily be adopted which will uphold its constitutionality. The presumption is that the Legislature intended to keep within the limits of both the federal and the state Constitutions, and to restrict the operation of its enactments to cases where they will have effect consistently therewith. State v. Lapointe, 123 A. 692, 81 N. H. 227, 228; Boston Ice Co. v. Railroad, 86 A. 356, 77 N. H. 6, 12, 13, 45 L. R. A. (N. S.) 835, Ann. Cas. 1914A, 1090; Kennett's Petition, 24 N. H. 139, 141; Opinion of Justices, 41 N. H. 553, 555; Leavitt v. Lovering, 15 A. 414, 64 N. H. 606, 608, 1 L. R. A. 58; Bliss's Petition, 63 N. H. 135; Telephone Co. v. State, 63 N. H. 167, 169; In re Fryeburg Water Co., 106 A. 225, 79 N. H. 123, 124, 18 A. L. R. 1373; Grenada County v. Brown, 5 S. Ct. 125, 112 U. S. 261, 28 L. Ed. 704; Knights Templar's, etc., v. Jarman, 23 S. Ct. 108, 187 U. S. 197, 205, 47 L. Ed. 139. This principle of construction has been recently applied to state statutes governing the operation of motor vehicles whose terms were sufficiently general to include interstate as well as intrastate carriers. Commonwealth v. O'Neil, 124 N. E. 482, 233 Mass. 535.

In the interpretation of a statute, the circumstances under which the language is used, the evil to be remedied and the object sought to be accomplished are material evidence. Opinion of Justices, 33 A. 1076, 66 N. H. 629, 658; Mulhall v. Nashua Mfg. Co., 115 A. 449, 80 N. H. 194, 196, and cases cited. What did the words mean to those who used them? State v. Nadeau, 123 A. 236, 81 N. H. 183, 185.

The advent of motor vehicles brought new problems in the regulation of the use of our highways. These problems and their solution have become progressively important, as the number of such conveyances and the variety of the uses to which they are put have multiplied, and as their weight and power have Increased. Our first attempt at regulation of motor vehicles (Laws 1905, c. 86) provided for registration, the licensing of operators, and the observance of certain safety regulations, including a limitation of speed. By the same legislative act nonresident cars and operators, registered and licensed in other states, were permitted the use of our highways, subject to our speed regulations. In the several amendments and revisions of this law, made during the interim between its enactment and the adoption of the statute now under consideration, no attempt was made to regulate the use of our highways by foreign owned vehicles, except to fix a time limit during which they might be operated under foreign registration, and to provide for local registration where the time limit was exceeded. This was the state of the statute law at the date of the legislation in question.

We may fairly take judicial notice that the situation which called for and resulted in the enactment of Laws 1919, c. 80, was the advent of the jitney whose operations were principally confined to transportation of passengers upon the streets of our cities and larger towns. The evident design of the statute was to mitigate the evil resulting from the operation of these conveyances in large numbers by irresponsible proprietors in competition with our street railways and to the danger of both passengers and travelers. Confirmatory evidence of the popular understanding of its purpose is found in the use of the word "jitney" in the headnotes, annotations, and indices of the official publication of the laws of that session. The character and the intended scope of the act is disclosed by an examination of the journal of the proceedings of the Legislature (see State v. Nadeau, supra, and cases cited), from which it appears that the first section of the bill as originally proposed read:

"Every person, firm or corporation operating any motor vehicle along and upon any public street or highway for the carriage of passengers for hire and affording a means of local, street or highway transportation similar to that afforded by street railways, by indiscriminately accepting and discharging such persons as may offer themselves for transportation along the course on which such vehicle is operated or may be running is hereby declared to be a common carrier. * * * "

The redraft of the act by the judiciary committee in the form finally adopted was an apparent attempt to condense the thought expressed in the original draft without material change in meaning. The history of the act in its making thus emphasizes the local character of the traffic with which the Legislature undertook to deal. It confirms the conclusions drawn from the language of the statute by this court, within the year following its enactment, in State v. Downes, 112 A. 246, 79 N. H. 505, 506, namely,...