United States v. Western Union Telegraph Co.

• Decision Date: 10 March 1921
• Docket Number: 243.
• Citation: 272 F. 893
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

272 F. 893

UNITED STATES v. WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH CO.

No. 243.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

March 10, 1921

Francis G. Caffey, U.S. Atty., of New York City(Earl B. Barnes Asst. U.S. Atty., of New York City, of counsel), for the United States.

Rush Taggart, Joseph P. Cotton, and Francis R. Stark, all of New York City, for appellee.

Before WARD, HOUGH, and MANTON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

The Western Union Telegraph Company, a corporation of the state of New York, entered into a contract with the Western Telegraph Company, Limited, a British corporation, whereby the American company agreed to lay a submarine telegraph cable between the Island of Barbados, West Indies, and a point on Miami Beach, on the east coast of Florida, and the British company agreed to lay a cable from Brazil to Barbados, to be there connected with the cable of the American company.The British company has an interport monopoly of ocean cable communication given it by the government of Brazil, which excludes American companies from operating cables directly from the United States to Brazil.When the Western Union Telegraph Company was about to land the American end of its cable at Miami Beach, the President forbade its doing so, and has actually prevented the landing by means of United States naval vessels.The end of the cable is now buoyed a little more than a marine league from Miami Beach.

Thereupon the Western Union Telegraph Company, which has three cables from Key West, Fla., to Cojimar, Cuba (one laid upon the Ft Taylor military reservation under a permit of the Secretary of War dated January 4, 1917, and the other two laid without permit), proposed to splice one of these cables into its uncompleted cable and to deliver messages from the United States to the British cable company...