CORNELL STEAMBOAT CO. v. UNITED STATES ET AL.
No. 384
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued March 1, 2, 1944. - Decided April 3, 1944.
321 U.S. 634
Appeal dismissed.
Mr. Robert L. Pierce, with whom Solicitor General Fahy, Assistant Attorney General Berge, and Messrs. Walter J. Cummings, Jr., Daniel W. Knowlton, and Edward M. Reidy were on the brief, for the United States et al.; Mr. Christopher E. Heckman argued the cause, and Mr. James A. Martin was on the brief, for the National Water Carriers Association, Inc., appellees.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.
Cornell operates tugboats for hire on the Hudson River and in and about New York harbor. Its tugs carry no cargo but move scows, barges, and similar vessels belonging to others which themselves usually carry cargo. This towing service Cornell offers to perform for the public in general. About ninety-five per cent of the vessels which it serves are moved from points in New York to other points in the same State, but these movements generally traverse New Jersey as well as New York waters. Part III of the Interstate Commerce Act1 provides that contract or common carriers by water in interstate commerce are subject to the Act‘s regulating provisions. In appropriate proceedings the Interstate Commerce Commission held Cornell‘s business covered. 250 I. C. C. 301; 250
First. Cornell argues that its towboats are not “water carriers” within the meaning of Part III of the Act. Looking at Part III, we find that, read together, §§ 302 (c), (d) and (e) define a “water carrier” as any person who engages in the “transportation by water . . . of . . . property . . . for compensation.” Section 302 (h) defines “transportation” as including “all services in or in connection with transportation,” as well as “the use of any transportation facility.” Any “vessel,” which means any “watercraft,” § 302 (f), is such a facility. § 302 (g). Congress has thus carefully and explicitly set out the conditions which in combination describe the kinds of carriers it intended to subject to regulation. Cornell‘s tugboats fall squarely within the description. If further proof of this be needed, §§ 303 (f) (1) and (2) expressly exempt from regulation under Part III certain types of towage service, but not that such as Cornell provides. Congress hardly would have exempted some towers, as it did in these sections, had it intended to exempt all towers.
Nevertheless, Cornell argues that the Act‘s language, which appears on its face plainly to include transportation by means of towers, should not be so construed. In support of this contention, it is said that towers do not have that common law or statutory liability to shippers which generally attaches to common carriers, see Sun Oil Co. v. Dalzell Towing Co., 287 U. S. 291; cf. The Murrell, 200 F. 826; and that a “carrier” has been judicially defined as one who undertakes to transport the goods of another, a definition not inclusive of Cornell, since it does not make contracts to carry goods but only to move vessels which have goods on them. See Sacramento Navigation Co. v. Salz, 273 U. S. 326, 328; The Propeller Niagara v. Cordes, 21 How. 7, 22. But the authorities relied upon by Cornell are of little or no assistance here. The case at bar does not require that we determine at large the legal obligations of a tower or define the usual characteristics of a carrier. We are called upon only to interpret a single Act of Congress. With unquestioned power to regulate Cornell‘s business, Congress in this Act has given its own definition to Cornell‘s activities in words literally inclusive of those activities, and which operate to subject to the Act interstate activities in the business of towing, which at common law was a common calling. Sproul v. Hemmingway, 14 Pick. 1, 6. The Act in which Congress has included this definition is designed, not to determine the legal status of vessels for all purposes,2 but to provide for regulation of the rates and services of competing interstate water carriers as part of a broad plan of regulation for all types of competing interstate transportation facilities. Cornell is in active competition with other types of interstate water carriers as well as with trucks and railroads. Therefore, if Cornell‘s particular method of providing water transportation facilities for others is not subject to regulation under the Act, it would appear to present an anomalous exception to the Congressional plan for regulation of competing transportation activities. We conclude that the language of the Act brings Cornell‘s business within its coverage, and that to construe the Act otherwise would frustrate the purpose of Congress.
Second. Cornell argues that even if it is covered by Part III of the Act, there was error in holding it to be a “common” rather than a “contract” carrier. Section 302
Third. The five per cent of Cornell‘s business which consists of moving vessels between New York and New Jersey ports is unquestionably covered by the Act, because § 302 (i) (1) specifically includes transportation “wholly by water from a place in a State to a place in any other State.”3 But about ninety-five per cent of the vessels towed by Cornell are picked up at New York ports and pulled to other ports in the same State. Cornell contends that none of these movements come within the Commission‘s jurisdiction. We accept findings of the Commission and the District Court that at least a substantial proportion of these latter movements regularly and ordinarily pass over New Jersey territorial waters. While moving on New Jersey waters, Cornell‘s vessels are not
The pertinent language Congress used in defining what should be interstate commerce in Part III of the Act reg-
Parts I, II, and IV of the Interstate Commerce Act, relating respectively to regulation of rail carriers, motor carriers, and freight forwarders, explicitly or by judicial interpretation cover all shipments which pass through the territory of two or more states even though both terminal points are in the same state.7 And so if railroads or truck-
ers should use tugs for the same purposes and over the same route as Cornell the movements would be interstate under the Act and subject to regulation by the Commission; and apparently the same is true of freight forwarders. From the language of Part III of the Act, its history, and its general purpose, we conclude that the Commission and District Court correctly decided Cornell‘s transportation through New York and New Jersey waters also is subject to regulation by the Commission.8
Affirmed.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, dissenting in part:
When in 1940 Congress provided for the regulation of water carriers in interstate and foreign commerce, it defined “transportation in interstate . . . commerce” for
the purpose of such regulation to mean “transportation of persons or property—(1) wholly by water from a place in a State to a place in any other State, whether or not such transportation takes place wholly in the United States.” § 302 (i) (1) of the Transportation Act of 1940,
The terms by which Congress conferred jurisdiction upon the Commission successively over rail carriers, motor carriers and water carriers are different. In a field so well trodden as this, involving as it does the distribution of authority as between States and Nation over transportation facilities of interest to both governments, one would suppose that only the environment of legislation and the history of its enactment could dislodge the natural assumption that different literary roads taken by Congress had different objectives. For we are here concerned with three different definitions having different genealogies in the general field of regulation incorporated in one piece of legislation, namely the Transportation Act of 1940. There is nothing in the legislative history of the extent of the power over transportation by water carriage committed to the Commission to show that Congress meant that the phrasing which it employed was in purpose to be identic with the different phrasings Congress used as to rail and motor carriers. The legislative history indicates the contrary.
The Cullom Act of 1887, as is well known, was in direct response to Wabash, St. L. & P. Ry. Co. v. Illinois, 118 U. S. 557. That decision rested fundamentally on the view that rail transportation has a physical unity and to such an extent that, as held very early, regulation of rail rates cannot be “split up” between two States or left only to one State even as to transportation which begins and ends in the same State but passes through the territory of another. See Hanley v. Kansas City Southern Ry. Co., 187 U. S. 617. The terms in which Congress granted regulatory power over railroads to the Interstate Commerce Commission reflected this view. The Commission was authorized to regulate rail transportation “from one State . . . to any other State,” but the provisions of the Act were not to apply “to the transportation . . . wholly within one State . . .” § 1 of the Act to Regulate Commerce,
A totally different situation was presented to Congress by the heavy water traffic on boundry streams through-
In 1940 Congress did undertake to regulate water transportation. But in view of the different ways in which rail, motor and water transportation are entangled with state interests and therefore state authority, it becomes vital to heed the exact language in which Congress expressed its purpose of regulation and the manner in which it finally passed the provisions by which it defined the Commission‘s authority.
No doubt, as the House Committee said, “Most of the regulatory provisions included in the new part III were modeled on provisions of part I dealing with the same subject.” H. R. No. 1217, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 18. In its context, the idea behind the phrase “regulatory provisions” bears on how to regulate, not what is regulated. And the fact that “most” provisions were the same, not all, indicates that variations from Part I were made in Part III. When therefore we find differences in definition of the “commerce” to be regulated between Part I and Part III, it will not do to disregard them and find identity through variation. Particularly is this true when there are practical differences to account for the variation. We must first define the field of the regulation—what “commerce” between two points in the same State but going through another becomes federally regulated although theretofore free from state regulation as was rail transportation, and what “commerce” is given over to federal regulation although theretofore it was within the province of state regulation as was water transportation in a situation like that under discussion. We thus have the practical differences between water-borne and land traffic, the practical problems in the distribution between state and federal power raised by water-borne traffic on boundary streams, and the actual differences in the definitions of “commerce” in the same Act of Congress responding to
The definition originally proposed in the Senate bill was intended to cover all three types of carrier—rail, water and motor. Particularization in this proposed definition of transportation within one State but through a second is clear proof that the Hanley doctrine applicable to rail carriers did not carry over to water and motor carriage. When Congress finally rejected the all-inclusive definition proposed by the Senate and decided on separate definitions of the commerce to be regulated, it did so precisely because it realized that the legal situation as to the three types was not the same. This careful process of distinctive definition by Congress is now in effect held to have been a futile legislative endeavor. The all-inclusive definition in the original Senate bill which the Congress rejected this Court restores.
A final word. We must not be unmindful that the Committees on Interstate Commerce out of which issued this legislation have a continuity of membership which makes them well versed in the problem before us: namely, how much of the constitutional power possessed by Congress for the control of utility services should in fact be committed to the Interstate Commerce Commission. (The Chairmen of the Senate and House Committees on Interstate Commerce, who had charge of the bills that became the Transportation Act of 1940, have been members of these Committees for twenty and twenty-three years respectively.) Particularly therefore when dealing with legislation coming from these Committees and in matters involving displacement of state by federal authority, we ought not to assume that Congress did not attach significance to what it said and meant to convey that which skilled language withheld. It is more respectful of Congress to attribute to it care instead of casualness. It is
I am therefore compelled to conclude that the Commission was not given power to regulate transportation by Cornell from one port in New York to another port in the same State.
MR. JUSTICE ROBERTS joins in this dissent.
Notes
“(j) Nothing in this part shall be construed to interfere with the exclusive exercise by each State of the power to regulate intrastate commerce by water carriers within the jurisdiction of such State.
“(k) Nothing in this part shall authorize the Commission to prescribe or regulate any rate, fare, or charge for intrastate transportation, or for any service connected therewith, for the purpose of removing discrimination against interstate commerce or for any other purpose.”
The words “intrastate commerce” and “intrastate transportation” as used in these two subsections are not expressly defined in Part III.Compare Wilmington Transportation Co. v. Railroad Comm‘n, 236 U. S. 151, 155-156, which held that transportation on the high seas between two points within the state of California, Santa Catalina Island and San Pedro, being “local” and not involving “passage through the territory of another state,” was subject to rate regulation by California in the absence of controlling federal legislation.
For a general survey of state and federal legislation pertaining to regulation of water carriers, see Regulation of Transportation Agencies, Senate Document No. 152, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 5-13, 98-170.Part II, § 203 (a) (10) of the Act defines the “interstate commerce” by motor vehicle over which the Commission has jurisdiction as including “commerce . . . between places in the same State through another State. . . .”
In the first place, the House Committee‘s failure to retain in Part III the particular language of the definition of “interstate commerce” in original S. 2009 is sufficiently explained by the fact, noted in the body of our opinion, that the Committee modeled Part III, not upon the provisions of original S. 2009, but upon the existing Part I of the Act. And from the report of the House Committee, a body experienced in matters of transportation legislation, we may fairly infer that, in thus using the language of Part I, it had in mind the same objective as the Senate Committee which drafted the original S. 2009, namely to save “so far as possible the existing language so that full advantage may be taken of the many interpretations, both judicial and administrative, which have been put upon the respective sections.” See S. R. No. 433, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 4; and H. R. No. 1217, 76th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 18-19. Cf. McLean Trucking Co. v. United States, 321 U. S. 67, 77-80.
Furthermore, had the experienced House Committee intended to place in Part III a definition of “interstate commerce” different in scope from that in Part I, it hardly would have expressed such an intention by adopting substantially the identical language of Part I. But neither the House nor the Senate Committee appears to have had any such intention. As shown by their reports and the language of the bills which they drafted, the intention of both Committees, and of Congress, was to provide for regulation of the same sort of interstate water shipments as already were being regulated in the case of interstate rail shipments. See H. R. No. 1217, supra; S. R. No. 433, supra.