Louisiana Ry Co v. United States

• Decision Date: 07 November 1921
• Docket Number: No. 291,291
• Citation: 42 S.Ct. 25,257 U.S. 114,66 L.Ed. 156
• Parties: LOUISIANA & P. B. RY. CO. v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

257 U.S. 114

42 S.Ct. 25

66 L.Ed. 156

LOUISIANA & P. B. RY. CO.

v UNITED STATES.

No. 291.

Argued Oct. 14, 1921.

Decided Nov. 7, 1921.

Mr. Luther M. Walter, of Chicago, Ill., for appellant.

Mr. Blackburn Esterline, of Chicago, Ill., for the United States.

The Attorney General and Messrs. W. R. McFarland, of Norfolk, Neb., and P. J. Farrell, of Washington, D. C., for appellee Interstate Commerce Commission.

Mr. Justice BRANDEIS delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Louisiana & Pine Bluff Railway Company, a common carrier owned by the Union Sawmill Company, serves it by means of a tap line which connects its mill at Huttig, Ark., with the Missouri Pacific Railway at Dollar Junction. The trunk line and the tap line joined in establishing through routes and joint rates from the mill to points on the trunk line and beyond. The division or allowance given to the tap line out of the joint rates was large. It was held by the Interstate Commerce Commission to amount to a rebate to the Union Sawmill Company and to discriminate unjustly against the Wisconsin Lumber Company, an independent concern also served by the tap line.¹ After proceedings before the Commission, which extended over many years, its supplemental order, entered June 10, 1919, limited the division receivable by the tap line for hauling lumber from the Union Sawmills to Dollar Junction to $3 per car.² The Louisiana & Pine Bluff Railway Company then brought this suit in the federal District Court for Western Arkansas against the United States to enjoin enforcement of the order and to annul the same. The bill charged that the order deprived plaintiff of property without due process of law, that it discriminated against plaintiff by denying to it the same compensation which other carriers were allowed to charge for like service, and that the Commission was without authority in law or fact to make the order complained of. The Interstate Commerce Commission intervened. Answers setting forth the proceedings taken were filed, and by consent of parties, the case was submitted for final hearing upon the pleadings. The District Court entered a decree dismissing the bill, and the case comes here on appeal under the Act of October 22, 1913, c. 32, 38 Stat. 208, 220.

No claim is made here that the division allowed is so low as to be confiscatory. No claim is made that there was lack of notice or of opportunity to be heard before the Commission, or that the proceedings before it were otherwise irregular. Nor could a claim that the order was unsupported by evidence be insisted upon. For only a part of the evidence taken before the Commission was introduced. Manufacturers' Railway Co. v. United States, 246 U. S. 457, 481, 38 Sup. Ct. 383, 62 L. Ed. 831; Spiller v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Ry. Co., 253 U. S. 117, 125, 40 Sup. Ct. 466, 64 L. Ed. 810. The claim now urged is that the order was arbitrary and so unreasonable that it should be set aside.

After the decision in the Tap Line Cases, 234 U. S. 1, 34 Sup. Ct. 741, 58 L. Ed. 1185, the Commission made, in respect to each of the many tap line companies which were party to the proceeding, an order, 40 Interst. Com. Com'n, 470, like that sustained in O'Keefe v. United States, 240 U. S. 294, 36 Sup. Ct. 313, 60 L. Ed. 651. By these orders the maximum division to a tap line for hauling a car from the mill to the junction with the trunk line for a distance of not more than 3 miles was fixed at $3. For a distance over 3 and not more than 6 miles the division to the tap line was fixed at 1 1/2 cents per 100 pounds, or approximately $9 a car. The plaintiff contends that it should be allowed to receive the division of 1 1/2 cents per 100 pounds, on the ground that its haul from the Union Sawmill plants to Dollar Junction was longer than 3 miles. Cars loaded with lumber at...