Looney v. Eastern Texas Co

• Decision Date: 20 May 1918
• Docket Number: No. 756,756
• Citation: 247 U.S. 214,38 S.Ct. 460,62 L.Ed. 1084
• Parties: LOONEY, Atty. Gen., et al. v. EASTERN TEXAS R. CO. et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

247 U.S. 214

38 S.Ct. 460

62 L.Ed. 1084

LOONEY, Atty. Gen., et al.

v EASTERN TEXAS R. CO. et al.

No. 756.

Argued April 16 and 17, 1918.

Decided May 20, 1918.

Mr. Luther Nickels, of Austin, Tex., for appellant.

Mr. J. W. Terry, of Galveston, Tex., for appellees.

Mr. Justice CLARKE delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case presents for decision a motion by appellees to dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction, and it involves the consideration of the latest chapter in a litigation which was commenced in 1911, when the Railroad Commission o Louisiana filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission a complaint charging various railroad companies with maintaining unreasonable rates on traffic from Shreveport, Louisiana, to points in Texas, and with maintaining rates which unjustly discriminated in favor of traffic moving wholly within the state of Texas as against that between Louisiana and Texas.

A hearing resulted in an order by the Commission, which was assailed by the railroad companies as invalid, but which this court sustained in Houston, East & West Texas Ry. Co. v. United States, 234 U. S. 342, 34 Sup. Ct. 833. 58 L. Ed. 1341, in a decision rendered in 1913, which has come to be widely referred to as the 'Shreveport case.'

After this decision there were further proceedings before the Interstate Commerce Commission, hwich resulted, on July 7, 1916, in the order out of which this litigation arose, which required many railroad companies, among other things,

'To establish, on or before November 1, 1916, * * * and thereafter to maintain and apply to transportation of property between Shreveport, Louisiana, and points in the State of Texas, class rates and rates on the above named (in the order) commodities not in excess of those contemporaneously applied by them for the transportation of like property for like distances between points in the State of Texas, except in those instances where the rates between Texas points have been depressed by reason of water competition along the Gulf of Mexico, or waters contiguous thereto.'

Immediately after this order was entered the Attorney General of Texas declared that it was void and that he would institute suits under the Texas laws for damages and penalties against any carrier which should comply with it. Thereupon the carriers filed a bill in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, in which they averred the validity of the order, the necessity for their obeying it, their intention to obey it, the threat of suits by the Attorney General, and, attaching a copy of the tariff they had compiled to comply with the order (designated as Texas Lines Tariff 2-B), they prayed for an injunction restraining the Attorney General from executing the threat which he had made. A temporary restraining order was granted and on November 1, 1916, the tariffs were duly filed.

Issue was joined on this bill, and elaborate pleadings were filed by both parties, such that there can be no doubt that the Attorney General challenged the validity of the order as arbitrary, unreasonable, unsupported by the evidence and void, and especially as being inapplicable, in the terms and for want of power, to the western part of Texas, which, for rate-making purposes, is designated 'differential territory.'

An application for a temporary injunction, on the issues thus joined, was heard on April 4, 1917, by three judges, and resulted in an order as prayed for. The court, in arriving at its announced conclusion, expressly disclaimed passing on the merits of the controversy, and granted the injunction because, as is variously stated in the opinions rendered, it deemed it necessary to prevent a multiplicity of destructive suits against the carriers; because the order of the Commission could not be held void on a preliminary hearing; and because the Texas rate situation involved was at the time in process of re- -examination by the Interstate Commerce Commission. No appeal was taken from this order.

Between the time of the filing of the bill for the injunction and the hearing on April 4th, the Interstate Commerce Commission had entered two orders in the proceeding in which the order of July 7, 1916, had been granted, one that the tariff filed by the carriers on November 1st, Texas Lines Tariff 2-B, slightly modified, should be permitted to remain effective until further order; and another reopening the proceeding to give to the Texas authorities an opportunity to introduce new and material evidence, which they asserted should lead to a modifica ion or vacating of the order and might bring about a just and reasonable settlement of the controversy.

Immediately after the granting of the preliminary injunction the taking of testimony in the reopened inquiry was commenced by the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Attorney, General participating, and went forward until in May, when it was continued to the following October for the filing of briefs and for oral argument.

And now, notwithstanding the temporary injunction and notwithstanding the pendency of the re-opened hearing before the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Attorney General on July 20th, instituted suit in a Texas state court, in which he prayed for an injunction restraining the carriers from giving the effect which they had been giving to the Texas Lines Tariff 2-B, since November 1st of the preceding year, as applied to intrastate traffic moving less than 351 miles within, to and from 'differential territory' in Texas. Before the date set for this application by the Attorney General for an injunction, the carriers filed a second supplemental bill in their suit in the United States court, detailing the facts...