W. Union Tel. Co. v. Call Pub. Co.
| Decision Date | 08 March 1899 |
| Citation | 78 N.W. 519,58 Neb. 192 |
| Parties | WESTERN UNION TEL. CO. v. CALL PUB. CO. |
| Court | Nebraska Supreme Court |
1. The circumstances under which the contract was entered into by which the telegraph company agreed to transmit to the other party to the contract the news reports of the Associated Press examined, and held not to show the contract to be elemental of the consideration of the agreement by the Associated Press to furnish the news reports to the party to the first-mentioned contract other than the telegraph company.
2. A public-service corporation is amenable to the rules of the common law relative to discrimination in rates between patrons for like intrastate or interstate services rendered under like conditions (the latter in the absence of congressional legislation on the subject), and courts will enforce the rules of general jurisprudence in such matters.
3. The evidence in regard to the difference in night and day rates for several certain classes of services held to furnish a basis for ascertainment of the measure of the difference in night and day rates in the services involved in litigation, in the absence of evidence to show reason for a greater distinction.
Error to district court, Lancaster county; Cornish, Judge.
Action by the Call Publishing Company against the Western Union Telegraph Company. There was a judgment for plaintiff, and defendant brings error. Affirmed.Estabrook & Davis and Ames & Pettis, for plaintiff in error.
John M. Stewart, for defendant in error.
In this action a recovery was sought of damages alleged to have accrued to the defendant in error by reason of unjust discrimination against it, and in favor of another patron of the plaintiff in error, in the rates charged for contemporaneous services. There was a trial of the issues joined in the district court, and the plaintiff was awarded a judgment. In an error proceeding in this court, the judgment was reversed, and the cause remanded. A second trial in the district court resulted in a judgment for defendant in error, and the cause has been again removed to this court by the telegraph company. The opinion rendered at the former hearing is reported in 44 Neb. 326, 62 N. W. 506, and contains an extended statement of the facts, to which we now refer the reader. We deem it unnecessary to again set them forth herein. As developed during the second trial, they were in the main similar to what appeared during the first. Wherein they were dissimilar or different, or such new facts as were shown at the second hearing, we will, to the extent necessary, state them in the connection in which they may be material.
The defendant in error (hereinafter designated the “Call Company”) purchased of the “Daily State Democrat,” and there was assigned to the former, an “Associated Press Certificate,” by which it became entitled to receive daily, and print, certain press or news dispatches which were to be transmitted to it from Chicago by the plaintiff in error (hereinafter styled the “Telegraph Company”). When the Call Company purchased the certificate of the Democrat, it immediately opened negotiations with the Associated Press relative to the dispatches and the contract for furnishing and reception of them. It appears that, as the contracts were usually made, the Associated Press agreed to furnish the dispatches for a certain stated sum; which was inclusive of the charges of the telegraph company for transmission, that the former collected the whole amount, and settled with the latter. The Associated Press demanded, however, that the Call Company make its own contract with the Telegraph Company, which was done. It is now claimed that, as this was demanded by the Associated Press, a compliance with such demand was an essential of the contract between it and the Call Company and it became and was a part of the consideration for such contract. To this we cannot agree. It is plainly disclosed that the Associated Press did not desire to become bound for the payment of the charges of the Telegraph Company for dispatches sent to the Call Company, and that this moved the demand to which we have referred; that the transaction amounted to no more than a sale of the dispatches to the Call Company, and it providing the means of transmission by its own contract; and that it should do so was not elemental of the consideration between it and the Associated Press.
It is argued that the petition did not state a cause of action. The reasons given for this contention are that the pleading attacked declared upon a contract for interstate business; that the...
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