59 N.H. 122 | N.H. | 1879
The statute requires that "the rates shall be the same for all persons and for like descriptions of freight between the same points," and that all persons shall have reasonable and equal terms, facilities, and accommodations for the transportation of themselves, their agents and servants, and of any merchandise and other property, upon any railroad owned or operated in this state. Gen. St., c. 149, s. 2; G. L., c. 163, s. 2. This statute, as was decided in McDuffee v. Railroad,
The terms of the statute must receive the interpretation which long established usage and the custom of the commercial world have given them. That custom, in all branches of business, always has been, and is, to move, care for, and sell a large amount of a given commodity, in one parcel or in a given time, at a less price-rate per pound, yard, or ton, than a smaller quantity of the same commodity, distributed in many and smaller parcels, at different times. The expense of handling, carrying, and storing the smaller amount is much greater, pro rata, than that of the same operations upon the larger amount in one body, and a discrimination in favor of the larger dealers is not inequality, but reasonable equality. By any other construction the statute would defeat itself; for, taking into account the lessened expense, pro rata, for transporting the greater amount of property in a single body or in a given time, the carrier would, by absolute equality of rates for all cases, receive a greater price-rate for carrying the larger quantity than the smaller, and thereby make an unjust discrimination against the person transporting the largest quantity of goods. Unreasonable equality is inequality.
The regulation of the plaintiffs, demanding a greater rate for the carriage of the defendants' goods than for the carriage of the goods of other persons who furnished a larger amount than the defendants in a given time, was not unequal nor unlawful, unless it was an unreasonable discrimination against the defendants. What is reasonable equality in the rates for the carriage of merchandise of the same description between the same points, and whether or not the rates established and demanded of the defendants were reasonably equal, are questions of fact, to be found on all the circumstances of the case at the trial term.
Case discharged.
STANLEY and BINGHAM, JJ., did not sit: the others concurred.