Milwaukee Elec. Ry. & Light Co. v. R.R. Comm'n of Wis.

• Decision Date: 06 April 1920
• Court: Wisconsin Supreme Court
• Parties: MILWAUKEE ELECTRIC RY. & LIGHT CO. v. RAILROAD COMMISSION OF WISCONSIN.

171 Wis. 297

177 N.W. 25

MILWAUKEE ELECTRIC RY. & LIGHT CO.

v.RAILROAD COMMISSION OF WISCONSIN.

Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

April 6, 1920.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Dane County; E. Ray Stevens, Judge.

Action by the Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company against the Railroad Commission of Wisconsin. From an order sustaining demurrer to complaint, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Action to set aside an order of the Railroad Commission requiring the plaintiff to continue the operation of one of its suburban lines because it is unreasonable in that it requires plaintiff to operate it at a loss based upon the rates fixed by the commission and received from the operation of such line. The commission entered a general demurrer to the complaint, and from an order sustaining it the plaintiff appealed.Van Dyke, Shaw, Muskat & Van Dyke, of Milwaukee, for appellant.

J. J. Blaine, Atty. Gen., and J. E. Messerschmidt, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.

VINJE, J.

The complaint shows that the plaintiff operates a system of urban and suburban railways in and about the city of Milwaukee and its suburbs, and it alleges that the order complained of is unreasonable because its suburban system for a long time past has been operated at a loss.

The question raised by the demurrer is: Does the complaint state a cause of action without alleging that its entire system will be operated at a loss? The trial court answered it in the negative on the ground that the true test is not the effect of the order upon a single line or upon a part of a system, but upon the whole system, and cited Puget Sound Co. v. Reynolds, 244 U. S. 574, 581, 37 Sup. Ct. 705, 61 L. Ed. 1325, 1330, to sustain the ruling. It appears that for the purpose of fixing rates the Railroad Commission has treated the urban and suburban lines as one system, and plaintiff takes no exception to such treatment, but suggests that it may run counter to the decision of this court in Zehren v. Milwaukee E. R. & L. Co., 99 Wis. 83, 97, 74 N. W. 538, 41 L. R. A. 575, 67 Am. St. Rep. 844, where it was held that a street railway upon a country highway constituted an additional burden thereon requiring condemnation under chapter 175, Laws of 1897, and that the corporate limits of a city marked the boundary where such additional burden began. It is not perceived how this decision affects the commission's treatment of plaintiff's system of street railways as constituting one system for rate-making purposes; nor has our attention been called to any ...