Henry Ford Son v. Little Falls Fibre Co

• Decision Date: 06 January 1930
• Docket Number: No. 47,47
• Citation: 74 L.Ed. 4839,50 S.Ct. 140,74 L.Ed. 483,280 U.S. 369
• Parties: HENRY FORD & SON, Inc., v. LITTLE FALLS FIBRE CO., et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

280 U.S. 369

50 S.Ct. 140

74 L.Ed. 483

74 L.Ed. 4839

HENRY FORD & SON, Inc.,

v LITTLE FALLS FIBRE CO., et al.

No. 47.

Argued Dec. 4, 1929.

Decided Jan. 6, 1930.

Messrs. Charles E. Nichols, Jr., and Robert E. Whalen, both of Albany, N. Y., and Clifford B. Longley and Wallace R. Middleton, both of Detroit, Mich., for petitioner.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 370-371 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Thomas O'Connor, George E. O'Connor, and Gerald W. O'Connor, all of Waterford, N. Y., for respondents.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 372-374 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case comes here on writ of certiorari to review a determination of the Court of Appeals of New York (249 N. Y. 495, 164 N. E. 558), upon which a judgment was entered in the state Supreme Court, awarding damages and an injunction restraining petitioner from maintaining flashboards on the crest of the 'Federal Dam,' constructed in the Hudson River near Troy, N. Y., under acts of Congress. Act of June 25, 1910, c. 382, 36 Stat. 630; Act March 4, 1913, c. 144, 37 Stat. 801,

Respondents, it is stipulated, are riparian owners on the Mohawk river, above its confluence with the Hudson, where at a point about three miles above the federal dam they own a dam and water power which they maintain for the development of power for use in their factories on adjacent land. The petitioner, a private business corporation, has procured from the Federal Power Commission a license for a hydroelectric power project, purporting to be granted under the Federal Water Power Act of June 10, 1920, 41 Stat. 1063 (U. S. Code, title 16, c. 12 (16 USCA §§ 792-823)). The license granted permission to use surplus water from the federal dam for the development of power at a plant to be constructed and maintained by petitioner for that purpose, on government land. As the license also per- mits, but does not require, petitioner has placed flashboards on the crest of the dam which, under normal conditions, raise the level of the water in the pool above the dam approximately two feet. Electric power developed by the project is used in the business of an affiliated private manufacturing corporation. The maintenance of the water at the new level has resulted in materially raising the water at the tailraces of respondents' power plants, with a corresponding reduction of the head of water and of the power developed at their dam.

As the court below held, the acts complained of constitute, under local law, an actionable wrong, entitling respondents to an injunction and to damages. Hammond v. Fuller, 1 Paige (N. Y.) 197; Brown v. Bowen, 30 N. Y. 519, 86 Am. Dec. 406; Hall v. Augsbury, 46 N. Y. 622, 625, 626; Rothery v. New York Rubber Co., 24 Hun, 172, affirmed 90 N. Y. 30; American Woolen Co. v. State, 195 App. Div. 698, 705, 187 N. Y. S. 341. To avoid this liability petitioner relies on the federal right or immunity specially set up by its answer, that the Hudson and Mohawk are navigable rivers; that all of the acts complained of were done under the license and authority of the Federal Power Commission and under regulations of the Secretary of War, authorized by the Water Power Act; that the license and the acts of petitioner authorized by it were found by the Commission to be desirable and justified in the public interest for the purpose of improving and developing the Hudson river for the benefit of interstate commerce, and that the petitioner, acting under the license, is an agency of the federal government, in the exercise of its power to regulate commerce and navigation.

It is contended that the navigable capacity of the Hudson and the Mohawk is subject to the regulation and control of Congress, under clause 3 of section 8, art. 1, of the Constitution, Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 6 L. Ed. 23; Gilman v. Philadelphia, 3 Wall. 713, 724, 18 L. Ed. 96; United States v. Chandler Dunbar Co., 229 U. S. 53, 63, 33 S. Ct. 667, 57 L. Ed. 1063; New Jersey v. Sargent, 269 U. S. 328, 337, 46 S. Ct. 122, 70 L. Ed. 289, which may constitutionally be delegated to the Power Commission, cf. Wisconsin v. Illinois, 278 U. S. 367, 415, 49 S. Ct. 163, 73 L. Ed. 426; that even if the finding of the Commission that the licensed project is in aid of commerce and navigation is not conclusive, as petitioner asserts it is, and even though some of the power developed by petitioner is used for private purposes, the raising of the level of the water by the use of flashboards is shown by the evidence to be beneficial to navigation, and it was therefore within the competency of the Commission to determine whether the project should be authorized. It appears that the petitioner is required by the license and its acceptance of it to supply from the licensed project power in specified amounts for the lighting and operation of the existing government lock and a second projected lock at the federal dam, which are instrumentalities of navigation.

It is argued that Congress, by the Federal Water Power Act, has authorized the Commission to develop navigation and for that purpose to establish obstructions in navigable waters, and, subject only to the constitutional requirement of compensation for property taken, its power when so exercised is supreme; that the present exercise of that power does not amount to a taking of the respondents' property, for the reason that it does not appear that the obstruction has so raised the water as to flood the respondents' land, and any right of theirs recognized by the state and asserted here, to have the river flow in its natural manner without obstruction, is subordinate to the power of the national government exerted by the Commission through its licensee, whose action, so far as it affects respondents' water power, is damnum absque injuria. United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Co., 229 U. S. 53, 33 S. Ct. 667, 57 L. Ed. 1063; Gibson v. United States, 166 U. S. 269, 271, 17 S. Ct. 578, 41 L. Ed. 996; Scranton v. Wheeler, 179 U. S. 141, 162, 163, 21 S. Ct. 48, 45 L. Ed. 126; Lewis Blue Point Oyster Co. v. Briggs, 229 U. S. 82, 33 S. Ct. 679, 57 L. Ed. 1083; see Fox River Paper Co. v. Railway Commission of Wisconsin, 274 U. S. 651, 47 S. Ct. 669, 71 L. Ed. 1279; Chase-Hibbard Co. v. City of Elmira, 207 N. Y. 460, 101 N. E. 158, 47 L. R. A. (N. S.) 470; compare United States v. Cress, 243 U. S. 316, 37 S. Ct. 380, 61 L. Ed. 746.

The respondents insist, as the court below found, that the federal dam was designed to be...