Monongahela Navigation Co. v. Coon

• Citation: 6 Pa. 379
• Parties: MONONGAHELA NAVIGATION COMPANY <I>v.</I> COON et al.
• Decision Date: 25 September 1847
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

6 Pa. 379

MONONGAHELA NAVIGATION COMPANY v. COON et al.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

September 13, 1847.

September 25, 1847.

Sept. 13.

IN error from the District Court of Allegheny county.

Williams, for plaintiffs in error.—The present case involves the assumption of the most unwarrantable exercise of power on the part of the legislature. It had been previously settled between these very parties, that there was no injury recognised by the law, resulting from the acts of the company; it was damnum absque

injuria. Subsequently to that decision this act was procured, which, being retrospective, is to receive the strictest construction.

It will therefore be found not to cover this case. It declares the charter shall not be construed to impair any right granted by act of the legislature. This was not the plaintiffs' case. The act allowing the erection of a dam in the Youghiogheny, not giving a right, but merely taking away the penalty for the exercise of a right. It would be grossly unjust to render the company liable by this retroactive legislation, for acts lawful at the time; and hence, a prospective construction merely should be put on the act of 1844: Underwood v. Lilly, 10 Serg. & Rawle, 97. Independent of the constitution, it is against common right to give such an action: Lambertson v. Hogan, 2 Barr, 22; Dash v. Vankleek, 7 Johns. 497; Osborne v. Huger, 1 Bay. 179; Wilkinson v. Leland, 2 Peters, 658; Story's Com. on Const. sect. 1393; O'Conner v. Warner, 4 Watts & Serg. 227; Menges v. Wertman, 1 Barr, 218; In re Albany Street, 11 Wend. 151; Varick v. Smith, 5 Paige, 137; Bonaparte v. Camden Railroad, Bald. 220; Norman v. Heist, 5 Watts & Serg. 571. Under the constitution the case is stronger; a charter is a contract: Dartmouth v. Woodworth, 4 Wheat. 625. And like any other contract with the state, its obligations are impaired by any deviation from its terms: Ibid; and Fletcher v. Peck, 6 Cranch, 137; 3 Story's Com. on Const. sect. 1379; Green v. Biddle, 8 Wheat. 1; New Jersey v. Wilson, 7 Cranch, 164; Tenet v. Taylor, 9 Cranch, 45; 1 Kent's Com. 20, 446; Bill of Rights, sect. 10.

Loomis and Hampton, contrà.—There is no attempt to review any decision of this court. The act of 1844, which gives the remedy, was not then in existence, and the right to pass that law was expressly reserved by the supplementary charter of 1839. That there was a prior moral obligation to make compensation for these injuries, cannot be questioned; and the power to add a legal sanction to such an obligation, is recognised in Menges v. Wertman, 1 Barr, 218.

Sept. 25. GIBSON, C. J.

If the constitutionality of the declaratory act depended on the provisions of the original act of incorporation, we would be bound to pronounce against it. A charter to execute a public work, which can only be accomplished by the state, or an agent acting by its authority, is essentially a contract between the state and the agent; and the principle needed not the decision in the Dartmouth College case to establish it. The wonder is, that it happened to be controverted. The state itself is answerable for private damage no further than it is expressly made so by the provision of the constitution which forbids private property to be taken for public use, without compensation made for it. A grant of this eminent domain, so far as it is not specially restricted, passes the immunity from responsibility which pertained to it while it was in the hands of the state; and a corporation invested with it, being the locum tenens of the state, is liable to consequential damage to private property no further than it is declared to be so in the act of its incorporation. In other words, the state is bound to defend its servant as far as it could defend itself, unless the terms of the contract restricted the claim to protection when it was made. Such is the law as it stood on the constitution of 1790, to which the framers of the amended constitution have added a provision requiring a corporation or natural person, invested with the power of the state, to make compensation for private property, or give security for it, before it be actually taken for public use. And this difference between the agents of the state and the state itself, which is the only one peculiar to the instrument as it stands, has no...