75 W. Va. 556 | W. Va. | 1915
The Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company made a charge for demurrage on a car of hay shipped from Newark, Ohio, to the Saunders-Weider Company at Huntington. The charge made was based on the published rates of the railway company, filed with the Interstate Commerce Commission pursuant to the acts of Congress in that behalf. The rate so published and established was one dollar per day. The railway company, applying that rate to the number of days which it claimed the car had been left on its tracks, exacted from the 'Saunders-Weider Company the sum of nineteen dollars.
The same was paid by the latter company under protest, so
The petitioner maintains that the justice is wholly without jurisdiction in the premises. It insists that the Interstate Commerce Commission must first pass on the matter and declare the charge to be too much before the plaintiff in the action can resort to a state court to recover back the amount, overpaid. Robinson v. Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, 64 W. Va. 406, and other cases, are relied on.
That a rate filed and published by a railway company pursuant to the acts of Congress must stand as the legal rate until the Interstate Commerce Commission declares it un-resonable, and that a state court -has no jurisdiction in any action to determine that such rate is unreasonable, is undoubtedly established by the cases cited by the petitioner. But in the case before us the justice has not undertaken to determine that the rate is unreasonable. That rate he has respected' as a legally established one. Tie has however! found that such legal rate was applied to a greater number of days than the number for which the Saunders-Weider Company should be responsible. The question before him in the action was not as to the reasonableness of the rate, but as to the number of days for which' the rate, accepted as a legal and reasonable one, should be charged. That he had jurisdiction to determine such a question, we have no doubt.
The justice may have erred in his finding as to the number of days for which the demurrage should be charged. But he had jurisdiction to hear and determine the fact, rightly or wrongly. Prohibition does not lie as against an erronepus determination of facts, where the court has power to hear and determine in the premises.
We are of opinion to discharge the rule and to deny the writ sought.
Writ refused.