Mackay Telegraph Cable Co v. City of Little Rock
| Decision Date | 19 May 1919 |
| Docket Number | No. 374,374 |
| Citation | 39 S.Ct. 428,250 U.S. 94,63 L.Ed. 863 |
| Parties | MACKAY TELEGRAPH & CABLE CO. v. CITY OF LITTLE ROCK |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. James W. Mehaffy, of Little Rock, Ark., in support of motion.
Mr. J. C. Marshall, of Little Rock, Ark., in opposition to motion.
The case was submitted on a motion to dismiss or affirm. The facts are as follows: On March 11, 1912, the city council of Little Rock passed an ordinance granting to the telegraph company the right to construct and maintain telegraph poles, wires, and fixtures and to install underground ducts and manholes along and over certain streets in the city particularly mentioned, including the following:
Among other things the ordinance provided that the company should pay to the city immediately upon the completion of the line, and annually thereafter, Other provisions made the location and maintenance of wires, poles, and conduits subject to the approval of the city officials; required the poles to be kept painted, and the wires, poles, conduits, and manholes to be maintained in a first-class condition and so as not to endanger life or limb; permitted the city to use the upper cross-arm of the poles for its fire alarm and police telegraph or telephone wires; and required written acceptance by the company before the ordinance should take effect. The company duly filed its written acceptance, and thereafter constructed its line, placing 66 poles upon city streets, 104 poles upon the right of way of the railway within the limits of the city as they existed at the acceptance of the ordinance, and 35 poles upon an adjacent portion of the right of way which at the acceptance of the ordinance was without the city limits but was brought within them a few days thereafter.
In the year 1917 the city sued the company in a state court, setting up the above-mentioned ordinance, averring that it was duly accepted by the company and was a contract between the parties, and alleging that pursuant to it the defendant had erected and maintained in the city 205 poles upon which there were due the license taxes or fees at fifty cents per pole for four and a half years, amounting to $461.25. The company by its answer admitted the passage and acceptance of the ordinance but denied that it was a contract; alleged that the provision as to license fees did not include the poles placed upon the right of way of the railway company, especially not those that were without the limits of the city at the time of the acceptance of the ordinance; that fifty cents per pole per year was unreasonable and excessive and sought to be imposed not for inspection and regulation of the poles but for revenue purposes only; that said license fee or tax deprived defendant of its property without due process of law and denied to it the equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; that defendant had accepted the restrictions and obligations of the Act of Congress approved July 24, 1866 (chapter 230, 14 Stat. 221; Rev. Stat. § 5263 et seq. [Comp. St. § 10072 et seq.]); that its poles and wires were in use for the transmission of messages for the United States and various departments of the government; and further that defendant was engaged principally in the transmission of telegraphic messages between points in Arkansas and points in other states and in foreign countries, and that the imposition of a fee or tax upon its poles was a burden upon and illegal interference with interstate and foreign commerce and the regulatory power of Congress over the same.
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