Long Island R. Co. v. Public Service Commission
Decision Date | 22 July 1968 |
Citation | 30 A.D.2d 409,292 N.Y.S.2d 167 |
Parties | The LONG ISLAND RAIL ROAD COMPANY, Appellant, v. The PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION of the State of New York and the Village ofRockville Centre, Respondents. Metropolitan Commuter Transportation Authority, Intervenor-Appellant. |
Court | New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division |
Sullivan & Cromwell, New York City, and George M. Onken, Jamaica (Robert MacCrate, New York City, Robert R. Prince, New York City, Richard H. Stokes, Jamaica, and John L. Warden, New York City, of counsel), for appellants.
Kent H. Brown, Albany (Vincent P. Furlong and Martin L. Barr, New York City, of counsel), for respondent Public Service Commission.
Charles Metz, Rockville Centre, for respondent Village of Rockville Centre.
Before BRENNAN, Acting P.J., and RABIN, HOPKINS, BENJAMIN and MUNDER, JJ.
This is an appeal by the Long Island Railroad Company (hereinafter called LIRR) from a decision and order of the Public Service Commission (hereinafter called PSC). We granted leave to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (hereinafter called MTA) to intervene as a party appellant; and MTA has joined in the appeal of LIRR. The appeal is pursuant to section 91 of the Railroad Law, which authorizes an aggrieved party to appeal directly to the Appellate Division from a decision of PSC relating to a railroad grade crossing. The decision and order herein involved were made in a proceeding brought by the Village of Rockville Centre, under sections 90 and 94 of the Railroad Law, for approval by PSC of the construction of a pedestrian underpass beneath the elevated tracks of LIRR and for a direction by PSC that LIRR or MTA should bear half the cost thereof. The PSC decision held that LIRR, a wholly-owned subsidiary of MTA, is subject to the provisions of sections 90 and 94 of the Railroad Law, which Inter alia provide (a) that, before a road is built across an existing railroad line, PSC must approve the manner of the road's construction and (b) that the cost of such construction shall be borne in equal shares by the railroad and the appropriate municipality. The PSC order directed the general manner of construction of the pedestrian underpass; directed LIRR to submit detailed plans of the work and a cost estimate to PSC for its approval; and directed LIRR to abey commencement of the work until such approval shall have been granted. The sole issue raised by appellants is whether PSC has jurisdiction over MTA and its subsidiaries and, consequently, whether it had jurisdiction to make the subject decision and order. In our opinion it did not.
The issue turns upon the construction of subdivision 8 of section 1266 of Title 11 of the Public Authorities Law ( ) which both sides insist is plain and unambiguous but which each reads as saying the opposite of what the other says. In relevant part, that section reads as follows:
(emphasis supplied).
The critical words in the quoted statute are the emphasized words 'under the public service law', since PSC contends that they limit MTA's exemption from PSC supervision to only those matters spelled out in the Public Service Law. It urges that the section is clear on its face and does not require construction; that its plain meaning is that PSC still has supervisory powers over MTA with respect to matters dealt with in the Railroad Law; and that a contrary construction (i.e., that PSC has no supervisory powers over MTA under the Railroad Law) would lead to chaos because it would leave wholly unregulated all railroads operated by MTA and its subsidiaries in the metropolitan area.
MTA, on the other hand, contends that the section clearly exempts it from all supervision by PSC because the sole basic grant of supervisory powers to PSC over railroads is in the Public Service Law, and the exemption of MTA from PSC supervision 'under the public service law' consequently is all-inclusive despite the quoted words; that, while the Public Service Law and Railroad Law give PSC jurisdiction over 'railroad corporations', MTA and its subsidiaries are not within that category; and that PSC jurisdiction over MTA would be incompatible with the Legislature's sweeping delegation of responsibility to MTA for a vital public function.
We believe that MTA's contentions are sound and that MTA is completely exempt from supervision by PSC.
As the issue is novel, we can look for guidance only to the statutes themselves, their history and purpose, and a few tangential court holdings.
It should be noted at the outset that subdivision 5 of section 1266 of the MTA Act gives all MTA subsidiaries the same privileges, immunities and exemptions as MTA itself has. Hence, if MTA is exempt from PSC supervision, its subsidiary, LIRR, would likewise be exempt.
New York State's regulation of railroads started in 1848, when certain minimum safety and financial standards for railroad corporations were enacted into law. By 1882 there had been established a Board of Railroad Commissioners with powers of investigation. In 1890 the first Railroad Law was enacted. In 1907 the Public Service Commissions Law abolished the Board of Railroad Commissioners and transferred the latter's functions to the Public Service Commissions; and it gave the Public Service Commissions greatly expanded regulatory powers over rates and other matters. At the same time the existing Railroad Law was continued in effect. In 1910 the old Public Service Commissions Law and Railroad Law were repealed, the present Public Service Law and Railroad Law were enacted in their place, and the new laws were expanded and harmonized so that, when read together, they created a unified system of railroad legislation (see People ex rel. Ulster & Delaware R.R. Co. v. Public Serv. Comm., 171 App.Div. 607, 609, 156 N.Y.S. 1065, 1067, affd. 218 N.Y. 643, 112 N.E. 1071).
The Public Service Law, as enacted in 1910 and as it still reads, contains two sections which establish PSC's basic jurisdiction over railroads. Section 5 provides that PSC's
'jurisdiction, supervision, powers and duties * * * shall extend * * *
1. To * * * railroads * * * and to the persons or corporations owning, leasing or operating the same * * *.'
Section 150 states that the Board of Railroad Commissioners was abolished in 1907 and provides:
'All the powers and duties of such board conferred and imposed by any statute of this state shall hereafter be exercised and performed by the public service commission.'
There is no equivalent provision in the Railroad Law which confers upon PSC a comprehensive, basic grant of jurisdiction over railroads. There are, instead, numerous substantive sections dealing with specific problems of safety, service, rates, financing, etc., and many of those sections provide for specific regulation of their subject matter by 'the commission'. Section 2 of the Railroad Law relates these specific regulatory powers to the basic grant of jurisdiction in the Public Service Law by defining the word 'commission' as 'the public service commission'.
A similar interconnection between these two statutes is shown by the definitions 'railroad' and 'railroad corporation' in section 2 of the Public Service Law and the absence of such definitions in the Railroad Law, even though those terms are used constantly in the Railroad Law. Obviously, the Legislature intended the definitions of those terms in the Public Service Law to be applied in the railroad Law as well.
Turning now to the MTA Act, a brief review of its genesis will shed some light on the problem at bar. It is common knowledge that the problems of mass transportation in and around large cities, and particularly in the New York metropolitan area, have been getting more and more complex and difficult in recent years. Much of the trouble in the New York area has been with the various commuter railroads feeding into the city. Their rolling stock became obsolete and their service woefully inadequate; and their financial troubles have been notorious. In the last two decades, the State tried a number of times to solve the problems of commuter railroads by patchwork devices, such as tax relief, while allowing them to remain in private ownership. These devices failed to rescue the railroads and in 1961 the New York and New Jersey legislatures authorized the Port of New...
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