Union Pac Co v. Public Service Commission of Missouri
| Decision Date | 09 December 1918 |
| Docket Number | No. 65,65 |
| Citation | 63 L.Ed. 131,248 U.S. 67,39 S.Ct. 24 |
| Parties | UNION PAC. R. CO. v. PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION OF MISSOURI |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. N. H. Loomis, of Omaha, Neb., H. W. Clark, of New York City, and I. N. Watson, of Kansas City, Mo., for plaintiff in error.
Mr. A. Z. Patterson, of Jefferson City, Mo., for defendant in error.
This case concerns the validity of a charge made by the Public Service Commission of Missouri for a certificate authorizing the issue of bonds secured by a mortgage of the whole line of the Union Pacific road. The statutes of Missouri have general prohibitions against the issue of such bonds without the authority of the Commission, impose severe penalties for such issue and purport to invalidate the bonds if it takes place. Moreover the bonds would be unmarketable if the certificate were refused. Upon these considerations the plaintiff in error applied, in all the States through which its line passed, for a certificate authorizing the issue of bonds to the amount of $31,848,900. The Missouri Commission granted the authority and charged a fee of $10,962.25. The Railroad Company accepted the grant as required by its terms, but protested in writing against the charge as an unconstitutional interference with interstate commerce, and gave notice that it paid under duress to escape the statutory penalties and to prevent the revocation of the certificate. It moved for a rehearing on the ground that the statutes of Missouri, if they gave the Commission jurisdiction, did not purport to authorize the charge, or, if they did purport to do so and to invalidate an issue without the Commission's assent, were in conflict with the Constitution of the United States. The rehearing was denied and thereupon the Railroad, pursuant to State Law, applied to a local Court for a certiorari to set the Commission's judgment aside as an interference with interstate commerce and as bad under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court decided that the charge was unreasonable and that the minimum statutory fee of $250 should have been charged. On appeal by the Commission the Supreme Court held the Railroad estopped by its application, reversed the Court below and upheld the charge. 268 Mo. 641, 187 S. W. 827.
The Railroad Company is a Utah corporation having a line over thirty-five hundred miles long, extending through several States, from Kansas City, Missouri, and elsewhere, to Ogden, Utah. It has only about six-tenths of one mile of main track in Missouri, and its total property there is valued at a little more than three million dollars, out of a total valuation of over two hundred and eighty-one millions. The bonds were to reimburse the Company for expenditures of which again less than one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars had been made in Missouri. The business done by the Railroad in Missouri is wholly interstate. On these facts it is plain, on principles now established, that the charge, which in accordance with the letter of the Missouri statutes, was fixed by a percentage on the total issue contemplated, was an unlawful...
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