People ex rel. Stead v. Chicago, I. & L. Ry. Co.

Decision Date05 December 1906
CourtIllinois Supreme Court
PartiesPEOPLE et rel. STEAD, Atty. Gen., v. CHICAGO, I. & L. RY. CO. et al.

OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE

Mandamus by the people, on the relation of W. H. Stead, as Attorney General, to compel the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railway Company and W. H. McDoel, as its president and general manager, to report to the railroad and warehouse commission, as required by Hurd's Rev. St. 1905, c. 114. Writ awarded.W. H. Stead, Atty. Gen., and George B. Gillespie, for petitioners.

G. N. Kretzinger and L. L. Smith, for respondents.

VICKERS, J.

This is an original petition for mandamus in this court in the name of the people of the state of Illinois, on the relation of W. H. Stead, as Attorney General, against the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville Railway Company (hereinafter called the ‘Company’), a nonresident railway corporation, and W. H. McDoel, president and general manager of said company, praying for a peremptory mandamus commanding respondents to report to the railroad and warehouse commission, as required by section 6 of an act to establish a board of railroad and warehouse commissioners and prescribe their duties, approved April 13, 1871 (Hurd's Rev. St. 1905, c. 114). The petition avers that the said company has been and is possessed of, owning, and operating, by lease or otherwise, a certain line of railway from a point on the state line dividing the state of Illinois from the state of Indiana, to a point in the city of Chicago, about 19 miles in length and located in the county of Cook and the state of Illinois; that Chicago is the terminal point of said company, where it maintains depots, freight, storage, and warehouses for the handling of freight and passenger traffic, and yards, side and terminal tracks for the handling of cars and the transaction of its business as a common carrier; that the said company is operating, by lease or otherwise, a large system of railway within the states of Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio, and terminating in the city of Louisville, in the state of Kentucky; that the company receives a large amount of business, both passenger and freight, as a common carrier in the city of Chicago and transports the same to the other states; that said company is possessed of a large amount of railroad property in the city of Chicago and along its line in the state of Illinois which is subject to taxation under the laws of this state; that said company and its president have wholly neglected and refused to make or cause to be made a report in accordance with the law as above set forth; that suit has been commenced by the petitioner against respondents to recover the penalties prescribed by said act for a failure to make said report as required by said section 6, in the circuit court of Cook county, where said cause is now pending, but that said case will not be reached for trial, in the regular course of the call of the Cook county docket, earlier than from three to five years. The petition prays for a writ of mandamus cammanding respondents to make the report required by said section 6, which petitioner avers, on information and belief, will not be made until compelled by the order of some court of competent jurisdiction. Respondents have filed demurrers, both general and special, to the petition, and the questions here involved relate to the sufficiency of the petition when challenged by demurrer.

First. Respondents contend that section 6 of the railroad and warehouse commission act has no application to this company, as the petition shows on its face that the companyis a foreign corporation engaged in interstate commerce, and that said section should be so construed as to exclude this company, thereby obviating a construction that would render the section void, as being an attempt by the state to interfere with the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress over the subject of interstate commerce.

Section 6 of said act is as follows: ‘Every railroad company incorporated or doing business in this state, or which shall hereafter become incorporated, or do business under any general or special law of this state, shall, on or before the first day of September, in the year of our Lord 1871, and on or before the same day in each year thereafter, make and transmit to the commissioners appointed by virtue of this act, at their office in Springfield, a full and true statement, under oath of the proper officers of said corporation, of the affairs of their said corporation, as the same existed on the first day of the preceding July.’ Then follow 41 clauses designating, in detail, the subjects upon which the report shall furnish information. Section 7 of this act authorizes the commissioners to propound any additional interrogatories to such railroad companies, which shall be answered in the same manner as those specified. Section 8 makes sections 6 and 7 applicable to the president, directors, and officers of every railroad company now existing or which shall hereafter be incorporated or organized in this state, and to every lessee, manager, and operator of any railroad in this state. Section 10 of said act makes it the duty of the railroad and warehouse commission to report at least once a year all its doings to the Governor, giving such facts, statements, and explanations as will disclose the actual workings of the railroad systems of the state in their bearing and relation to the business and prosperity of the people of the state. Section 11 requires the commissioners to examine into the management and all other matters concerning the business of railroads, as far as the same pertain to the relation of such roads to the public and to the security and accommodation of persons doing business therewith, and to ascertain whether such railroad companies, their officers, managers, lessees, and agents, comply with the law of the state concerning them. These provisions are all referred to for the reason that all of them seem to have some bearing upon the proper construction of section 6. The language of section 6 is so broad and comprehensive that it is difficult to see how it can be interpreted so as to exclude any railroad company doing business in this state. ‘Every railroad company incorporated or doing business in this state’ clearly includes companies incorporated under the laws of Illinois and companies incorporated under the laws of other states and which are engaged in the usual business of a railroad corporation within this state. The expression ‘doing business in this state’ occurrs in section 26 of chapter 32 (Hurd's Rev. St. 1905) and is used with respect to foreign corporations. This language has been defined to mean doing the business or character of business for which the corporation was organized. Bradbury v. Waukegan & Washington Mining Co., 113 Ill. App. 600;Mandel v. Swan Land & Cattle Co., 154 Ill. 177, 40 N. E. 462,27 L. R. A. 313, 45 Am. St. Rep. 124;Harding v. American Glucose Co., 182 Ill. 551, 55 N. E. 577,64 L. R. A. 738, 74 Am. St. Rep. 189. In addition to the general averment in the petition that the company was doing business in this state, facts are set out from which it is manifest that this company was extensively engaged in the operation of a railroad line in this state and carried on generally the business of a common carrier of both freight and passengers.

We come more readily to the view that all railroads doing business in this state are included within the purview of section 6 of this act when we consider the object of this legislation as gathered from the general scope of the act and the impossibility of attaining its purposes if it is to be limited to those roads that are exclusively engaged in intrastate commerce. Among the objects to be attained by the creation of the railroad and warehouse commission and in giving to it a supervisory and administrative power over the maintenance, management, and operation of railroads, is to protect the lives and health of the traveling public, to guard against discrimination and oppression, and generally to promote the efficiency of railroad companies in the discharge of their duties to the state and the people. If railroads engaged in interstate commerce are for that reason exempt from the duty imposed by section 6, then they must be excluded from all other provisions of the act for the same reason. In the application of this law we see no reason for a distinction based on the legal residence of the corporation. If a railroad company chartered in Illinois is engaged in interstate commerce, the prohibition of the commerce clause of the federal Constitution applies to the state of Illinois with respect to such company equally with every other state prohibiting one as well as another from imposing any restrictions or burdens on commerce between the states.

Since, in our opinion, section 6 must be held ex vi termini applicable to all railroads which are doing business in this state, without reference to the state from which they derive their charters, and wholly regardless of whether they are engaged in interstate or intrastate commerce, we come next to the question whether this section is void under the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States. This clause provides that Congress shall have power to ‘regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states and with the Indian tribes.’ Const. U. S. art. 1, § 8, par. 3. No well-defined classification has been made of the laws which a state may properly pass under its taxing or police power and those which it may not pass because of the exclusive power of Congress over interstate commerce. Indeed, the difficulties inherent in...

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