Toledo, A. A. & N.M. Ry. Co. v. Pennsylvania Co.

• Decision Date: 25 March 1893
• Docket Number: 1,139.
• Citation: 54 F. 746
• Parties: TOLEDO, A.A. & N.M. RY. CO. v. PENNSYLVANIA CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

54 F. 746

TOLEDO, A.A. & N.M. RY. CO. v. PENNSYLVANIA CO. et al.

No. 1,139.

United States Circuit Court, N.D. Ohio, Western Division.

March 25, 1893

Statement by RICKS, District Judge:

The original bill was filed March 11, 1893, and the mandatory injunction set out in the opinion of the court was made on the same day. On the 18th of March, upon an affidavit filed by the superintendent of the Michigan division of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad, the material allegations of which are set forth in the opinion of the court, a rule was entered requiring certain named engineers and firemen who were employed by that company, and in said affidavit charged with knowingly violating the orders of the court, to appear and show cause why they should not be attached for contempt. Pending the service of this order upon the accused it was represented to the court by counsel and officials of the several defendant railroads that here was great excitement and anxiety among the employes of the railroads involved as to the duties expected from them under the mandatory orders made, and it was therefore suggested that some statement from the court as to the scope and purposes of said order would not only be very acceptable, but wholesome and beneficial, and might result in preventing the strike from spreading. Accordingly, when the accused were brought into court, and before they were released upon their own recognizance to appear from day to day, and abide the further orders of the court, the following admonition was given.to them:

'Admonition to the Accused.

'The order of the court was made in this case after due consideration, with full knowledge of its scope and possible consequences, and with the purpose to enforce it in its letter and spirit without unnecessary hardship, but with such promptness and vigor as might become necessary to give full protection to all concerned. You are now before the court under an order based upon affidavits to show cause why you should not be attached for contempt for refusing to obey the order of the court, a copy of which has been duly brought to your attention. The court proposes to give you full opportunity to employ counsel, take advice, and make all proper defenses. You are to have your day in court, and be fully heard. But I desire now, at this stage of the proceedings, to suggest to you that you should not overlook the nature and importance of your employment. You are engaged in a service of a public character, and the public are interested not only in the way in which you perform your duties while you continue in that service, but are quite as much interested in the time and circumstances under which you quit that employment. You cannot always choose your own time and place for terminating these relations. If you were permitted to do so, you might quit your work at a time and place, and under circumstances, which would involve irreparable damage to your employers, and jeopardize the lives of the traveling public. Your employers owe a high duty to the public, which they are compelled to perform under severe penalties for every neglect, and they have in turn a higher claim upon you and your service than that due from the ordinary employe. This court does not assume the power to compel you to continue your service to your employers against your will, but it does undertake to compel you to perform your whole duty while such relations continue; and does further claim, for the purpose of ascertaining whether its orders have been violated, the right to determine when your relations to your employer legally terminated, and when your obligations to observe this order ceased. So that it may, in the mean time, be important for you to reflect and consider whether you can safely continue in your employer's service with the purpose to quit it at a moment when some duty may be required of you which is in violation of some supposed promise or obligation you owe another, not your employer. That time for leaving your post of duty might come under circumstances when you would by such act unintentionally imperil the safety of lives intrusted to your employers, and do their business vast and irreparable damage. It might, too, unintentionally involve you in a conflict with the court through obstructing its process and interfering with its mandates. I therefore suggest to you and to all others who are in similar employment, that there ought not to be any strained construction made of the provisions of the court's order. The only safe way to obviate trouble is to quit the service of your employer, if you do not intend to observe the orders of the court as made and which are binding upon you while that service continues. This you have a right to do; but if you continue in that employment, this court will expect you to do your full duty to your employer and to the public, and to observe the orders which have been made in this case. The high character which the public justly give to the engineers and firemen who serve on our great railways has been earned by innumerable proofs of the most loyal service to employers, and the most heroic and faithful devotion to duties of great peril. The court has the right, therefore, to expect from such men a willing observance of the laws of the land, and due respect for such orders and processes as it may be called upon to make in this case, in the fulfillment of its duties to the public and the parties invoking its jurisdiction.'

The hearing of the testimony on the motion for contempt was begun on Tuesday, March 21st, and continued from day to day. Argument of counsel was heard, and the decision of the court was announced on Monday, April 3. The following is a full and correct copy of the opinion.

Geo. C. Greene and Emory D. Potter, Jr., for Lake Shore & M.S. Ry. Co.

Alexander L. Smith, for complainant.

E. W. Tolerton, for Pennsylvania Co.

Frank Hurd and Jas. H. Southard, for the accused.

RICKS, District Judge, (after stating the facts.)

This suit was instituted by the Toledo, Ann Arbor & North Michigan Railway Company, to compel the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad, the Pennsylvania Company, and other defendants, to receive from it and deliver to it freight and cars destined from one state to another, commonly known as 'interstate freight,' which it avers the defendants have refused to do since March 11, 1893, because complainant has employed as locomotive engineers in its service men who are not members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The bill further avers that the defendants continue to afford to other railroads full and free facilities for interchange of traffic, thereby illegally discriminating against it. The bill was drawn to enforce the third section of the interstate commerce act, which provides--

'That it shall be unlawful for any common carrier subject to the provisions of this act to make or give any undue or unreasonable preference or advantage to any particular person, company, firm, corporation, or locality, or any particular description of traffic, in any respect whatsoever, or to subject any particular person, company, firm, corporation, or locality, or any particular description of traffic, to any undue or unreasonable prejudice or disadvantage in any respect whatsoever.' The common carriers subject to the provisions of that act are defined by the statute to be 'any common carrier or carriers engaged in the transportation of passengers or property wholly by railroad, or partly by railroad and partly by water, when both are used, under a common control, management, or arrangement, for a continuous carriage or shipment from one state or territory of the United States or the District of Columbia to any other state or territory of the United States. * * * '

The subject-matter of this litigation is, therefore, the construction and enforcement of an act of congress, and the court acquires jurisdiction because of the federal question involved. That such question is involved I think too plain for serious controversy. It is sufficient to constitute a case for cognizance by a federal court if it involves but a single ingredient or question dependent on the constitution or a law or a treaty of the United States, although it may at the same time involve any other questions that depend on the general principles of law. Chief Justice Marshall, in Osborn v. Bank, 9 Wheat. 738, considered this point, and came to the following conclusion:

'We think, then, that when a question to which the judicial power of the Union is extended by the constitution forms an ingredient of the original cause, it is in the power of congress to give circuit courts jurisdiction of that cause, although other questions of fact or law may be involved in it.'

Remedies of a similar nature might undoubtedly be invoked under statutes and the common law, but the act in question affords the broadest and most effective relief, and the jurisdiction is therefore safely grounded upon that law.

Upon the filing of this bill on the 11th day of March, a mandatory injunction was allowed, directed to the defendants, their agents, officers, servants, and employes, and it was therein ordered--

'That the said defendants, Albert G. Blair, Jacob S. Morris, the Pennsylvania Company, the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railway Company, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company the Michigan Central Railroad Company, the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton Railroad Company, the Columbus, Hocking Valley & Toledo Railway Company, the Toledo & Ohio Central Railway Company, the Cincinnati, Jackson & Mackinaw Railway Company, and each of them, and their officers, agents, servants, and employes, be, and they are hereby, enjoined and restrained from refusing to offer and extend to said the...