Pittsburg, C., C. & St. L. Ry. Co. v. Chappell

• Citation: 183 Ind. 141,106 N.E. 403
• Decision Date: 07 October 1914
• Docket Number: No. 22472.,22472.
• Court: Indiana Supreme Court
• Parties: PITTSBURG, C., C. & ST. L. RY. CO. v. CHAPPELL.

183 Ind. 141

106 N.E. 403

PITTSBURG, C., C. & ST. L. RY. CO.

v.CHAPPELL.

No. 22472.

Supreme Court of Indiana.

Oct. 7, 1914.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jasper County; Charles W. Hanley, Judge.

Action by Mary N. Chappell against the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Company. Judgment for the plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.G. E. Ross, of Logansport, for appellant. Jasper Guy, of Remington, and Barger & Hicks, of Chicago, Ill., for appellee.

COX, C. J.

Appellee recovered a judgment against appellant for $350 as damage done to a building, owned by appellee and situated adjacent to appellant's railroad, by fire communicated to such building by one of appellant's locomotive engines in use on its railroad. From that judgment this appeal is brought, and appellant relies for reversal on assignments of error which involve the sufficiency of appellee's complaint and the correctness of the action of the trial court in instructing the jury and refusing to instruct it as requested by appellant.

[1] Counsel for appellant first assails the complaint for a failure to allege facts showing a specific duty on appellant's part to exercise care to protect appellee's property from fire through the operation of its locomotive and a violation of such duty, and therefore it is asserted the complaint is insufficient to charge injury and damage as a result of negligence. This is instantly granted. But appellee's action is not based on negligence. It has for its foundation an act of the General Assembly approved March 3, 1911 (Acts 1911, p. 186; sections 5525a and 5526b, Burns 1914). On the theory that the complaint was based on that act the cause was tried. The intent of the act is, obviously, to impose a liability in the absence of negligence on the part of the railroads for injury and damages to the property of others by fire communicated directly or indirectly to it by railroad locomotive engines and to change the heretofore prevailing rule which made railroads liable in such cases only for a want of due care in the use of their engines.

But assuming that the complaint is based on this act, counsel for appellant advances the claim that the act is unconstitutional and void and cannot be made the basis of an action. As the constitutional validity of the act is assailed by counsel in several particulars involving both the title and the body of the act, it is here set out fully:

“An act to establish the responsibility of railroads, corporations, companies, and persons owning or operating railroads, for damages by fires communicatcd by locomotives.

Section 1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of the state of Indiana, that each railroad corporation owning or operating a railroad in this state shall be responsible in damage to every person or corporation[s] whose property may be injured or destroyed by fire communicated directly or indirectly by locomotive engines in use upon the railroad owned or operated by such railroad corporations, and each such railroad corporation shall have an insurable interest in the property upon the route of the railroad owned or operated by it, and may procure insurance thereon in its own behalf for its protection against such damages: Provided, in all actions instituted under this act the burden of proving the defense of contributory negligence shall be upon the defendant. Such defense may be proved without special plea: Provided, that this act shall not be construed to prevent or affect in any wise fire clauses which may be inserted in contracts between railroad companies and other parties, relative to the construction of and operation over private side-tracks.

Sec. 2. The term ‘railroad corporations' contained in this act shall be deemed and taken to mean all corporations, companies and individuals now owning or operating, or which may hereafter own or operate, any railroad within this state.”

[2] It is first urged by counsel for appellant that the act is arbitrarily discriminatory and so violates the privileges and immunities and equal protection provisions of the fourteenth amendment of the federal Constitution and section 23 of the Bill of Rights of our own state Constitution. This claim of arbitrary discrimination primarily is based on the assumption that the act does not apply to railroads owned or operated by partnerships while purporting to bind all railroads otherwise owned or operated. There is nothing in the act on which serious claim that railroads owned or operated by a partnership are excluded from the burdens of the act. The words of the act, title, and purview are unusually specific, and explanatory of the legislative intent to apply the new rule of liability to all railroads using fire in their locomotive engines to generate the power to move them. The fact that the term “partnerships” is not used cannot serve to exclude or relieve any railroad so owned or operated. Both the words “corporations” and “companies” are used in the title and in section 2 of the act, and the latter must be taken to refer to unincorporated associations of persons or partnerships as distinguished from corporations. State v. Krasher (1907) 170 Ind. 43, 83 N. E. 498. Moreover, the words “persons” and “individuals” as used in the act are inclusive of partnerships. A partnership is not a legal entity. It was said by this court, in State v. Krasher, supra, 170 Ind. at page 47, 83 N. E. at page 500:

“Expressions to that effect are not infrequently found in the cases, but it appears clear to us that in thus speaking the courts have referred to partnerships as legal entities merely as a term of accommodation, where there was under consideration some question as to the rights of the parties inter se or of the derivative rights of creditors growing out of the equities of the parties. Such statements cannot be accepted as affording a sufficient foundation for the view that a partnership is not composed of its individual members. The subject is carefully discussed in 22 Am. & Eng. Encyc. Law (2d Ed.) 75, where it is said: Though by a legal fiction a corporation is regarded as a legal person or entity, separate and distinct from its members or stockholders, yet in the case of partnerships, at least at common law, exactly the reverse is held, and a firm, as such, is not regarded as having any legal existence apart from the members composing it. In accordance with this rule, what is called the property of the firm is the property of the individual partners, and what are called the debts of the firm are the debts of the partners. *** Notwithstanding the nonrecognition of the firm as a distinct legal entity, it is convenient, if not indispensable, for many purposes to personify the firm, and it is usual, whenever the collective rights and liabilities of the partners are the only immediate thing that need be considered, to use the term ‘firm’ or ‘partnership’ as symbols to designate the aggregate whole as distinguished from the individual partners. It is merely a convenient mode of expression, which simplifies business operations and legal reasoning.”

The act does not exclude railroads owned or operated by partnerships and does not, in this respect, give reason for appellant's claim of unwarranted discrimination.

[3] The further claim is made that these same constitutional provisions are violated in that the law is made to burden railroads with a liability which is not also imposed on those persons and corporations owning or operating factories, mills, traction engines, and others using fire to generate steam for power. Answering this claim with at least as much particularity as it is made by counsel, it is only necessary to say that a reason for the selection of railroads as a class on which to place this particular liability, from all others using fire to generate steam for power, is so obvious as to make the classification fall easily within the police power which is delegated to the Legislature.

[4] Counsel's main reliance seems to be placed on the contention that, as the law of this state under which appellant's railroad was built and put in operation (clause 8, § 5195, Burns 1914) authorized it to use locomotive engines propelled by steam power generated by fire, and as the law as declared by this court made it liable for damages caused by fire resulting from the use of its engines only in the event of negligence, the act before us, unless held to apply only to railroads built and put in operation after the act took effect, must be held to violate the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment, section 21 of the Bill of Rights of our state Constitution, which forbids the taking of property by law without compensation, and those provisions of our state and federal Constitutions which forbid laws impairing the obligations of contracts (State Constitution, art. 1, § 24; Fed. Const. art. 1, § 10). It is clear that the act applies to all railroads which are now or may hereafter operate in the state without regard to the time they were built and put in operation and cannot be held to fasten the liability created only on those railroads built and put in operation after the act became a law.

The inquiry then arises whether there is any merit in the contention of appellant's counsel.

[5][6] A long and firmly settled principle of law which has grown out of a well-ordered civil society is that every holder of property, however absolute and unqualified may be his title, holds it under the implied liability that his use of it may be so regulated that it shall not encroach injuriously on the equal enjoyment of their property by others who have an equal right to the enjoyment of their property, nor be injurious to the community. The law is also so fixedly settled as to be beyond controversy that rights and privileges arising from contracts with a state are subject to regulations for the protection of the public health, the public morals, and the general safety of persons and property,...