International Ry Co v. Anderson County
| Decision Date | 15 April 1918 |
| Docket Number | No. 243,243 |
| Citation | 246 U.S. 424,38 S.Ct. 370,62 L.Ed. 807 |
| Parties | INTERNATIONAL & G. N. RY. CO. et al. v. ANDERSON COUNTY et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
[Syllabus from pages 424-425 intentionally omitted] Messrs. H. M. Garwood and Samuel B. Dabney, all of Houston, Tex., for plaintiffs in error.
Messrs. F. D. McKenney, of Washington, D. C., T. B. Greenwood, of Austin, Tex., and A. G. Greenwood and W. C. Campbell, both of Palestine, Tex., for defendants in error.
[Arguments of Council on pages 425-428 intentionally omitted.]
This is a suit brought by the defendants in error to prevent the Railroad Company, plaintiff in error, from moving its machine shops, roundhouses, and general offices from the City of Palestine and from maintaining any of them elsewhere. An injunction was issued as prayed; the judgment was affirmed by the Court of Civil Appeals, 174 S. W. 305, in accordance with intimations of the Supreme Court of Texas at an earlier stage, 106 Tex. 60, 156 S. W. 499, and an application to the latter Court for a writ of error was refused. The case is brought here upon voluminous assignments of error which may be summed up in the propositions that the State Court was without jurisdiction because of certain foreclosures in the Courts of the United States, that the judgment disregarded rights secured by the decrees of those Courts, and that it gave effect to a statute which as applied burdened interstate commerce, impaired the obligation of contracts, etc., and was contrary to Article 1, Sections 8 and 10, and to the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
The facts begin with the predecessors of the plaintiffs in error. The Houston & Great Northern Railroad Company, a local road, was chartered by a special Act on October 26, 1866. About March 15, 1872, it contracted with the citizens of Palestine in the County of Anderson in consideration of the issue of bonds by the county to maintain its general offices, machine shops and round houses at that place. The International Railroad Company was chartered in like manner on August 5, 1870. In 1872 the two companies agreed to consolidate and this agreement was ratified by the stockholders of each in 1873. A special Act of April 24, 1874, authorized the consolidated company, known as the International & Great Northern Railroad Company, to issue bonds secured by mortgage and provided that all acts theretofore done in the name of either of the companies should be of the same binding effect upon the new one that they were upon the old. In 1875 the new company in consideration of the erection of houses for its employes renewed the contract of the Houston & Great Northern and at about the same time it resolved that its general offices should be removed to Palestine. We see no reason for reopening the findings below that the alleged contracts were made. The offices were removed and there they remained, subject to some immaterial interruption, until 1911. The machine shops and roundhouses are still there. Each of the two constituent companies had executed mortgages before the date of the original agreement of the Houston & Great Northern and each executed another before the contract of the consolidated company in 1875. These mortgages were all foreclosed in 1879 and the property conveyed to a corporation, still called the International & Great Northern Railroad Company, by a deed that conveyed all the franchises and chartered powers of the original roads. The foreclosure is one fact relied upon for the defence.
The purchasing company in its turn executed mortgages, one of which, including, like the earlier ones that we have mentioned, the franchise to be a corporation dated in 1881, is the source of the plaintiff in error's title, by a foreclosure in 1910-1911. Before this last foreclosure took place two statutes were enacted in Texas that are important. The first, known as the Office-Shops Act, approved March 27, 1889, c. 106, Rev. Civil Stat. 1911, art. 6423, provided that every railroad company chartered by the State or owning or operating a line within the State should permanently maintain its general offices at the place named in its charter, and if no certain place were named there, at such place as it should have contracted to locate them, otherwise at such place as it should designate; also that it should maintain its machine shops and round houses at the place where it had contracted to keep them, and that if the offices, shops or round houses were located on the line of a railroad in a county that had aided such railroad by an issue of bonds in consideration of the location being made, then such location should not be changed; 'and this shall apply as well to a railroad that may have been consolidated with another as to those which have maintained their original organization.' A violation of the Act entails forfeiture of the charter, with a penalty of $5,000 a day for every day of violation. Rev. St. art. 6425. An Act approved two days later, March 29, 1889 (Acts 21st Leg. c. 24), with provisos that no rights should be acquired inconsistent with the present Constitution, that the main track once constructed and operated should not be removed, etc., authorized purchasers of soldout railroads to form a new corporation, whereas previously the purchaser had continued the franchises of the old under the original grant. A law of September 1, 1910, (Acts 4th Called Sess. c. 4), further emphasized the change of policy by excluding a succession to the old charter unless coupled with an acceptance of certain liabilities, and providing that the charter should pass subject to the provisions and limitations imposed and to be imposed by law. Rev. St. art. 6625.
The mortgage of 1881 last mentioned was foreclosed by proceedings in the Circuit Court of the United States. A decree of May 10, 1910, while reserving jurisdiction of the property, ordered a sale, which, after postponements,...
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