79 Pa. 257 | Pa. | 1875
delivered the opinion of the court, January 4th 1876.
No doubt is entertained that at the time of the organization of the Edgewood Railroad Company, the plaintiffs had such title to the land which the defendants have appropriated, as to enable them to maintain this bill. The authorities referred to on the argument fully vindicate the finding of the master on the facts reported.
Yoluminous as this record is, it presents but one significant question for discussion and decision. Can such a railroad as that which the facts found by the master prove the defendants to have built, be maintained under the provisions of the act “to authorize the formation and regulation of railroad corporations,” passed on the 4th of April 1868, and the supplement to it passed on the 28th of April 1871 ? It is alleged by the plaintiffs that these acts have been wrested from their intended purpose to secure a public benefit, in order to promote a purely private enterprise, and that the construction of their road by the defendants under the charter which they hold, has been a fraudulent evasion of the provisions of the statutes relating to lateral railroads.
The first section of the Act of 1868 authorizes any number of
The legislation under which the rights of the defendants are asserted, confers large powers upon associations of individual citizens, the exercise of which may be capable of producing varied forms of mischief. The passage of the Act of the 19th of June 1871, therefore, was a wise and salutary measure of precaution. The first section of that act makes it the duty of the court in which any proceeding is pending where an injury is alleged to have been caused by a corporation claiming a right or franchise to do the act by which the injury is produced, to inquire and ascertain whether the right or franchise claimed by the corporation is actually possessed. When this suit was commenced, the defendants were engaged in constructing their railroad upon the land of the plaintiffs, and the complaint was that they were doing this.in vio
The object for which the Act of 1868 was passed is unmistakable. It was to vest in voluntary associations of individuals, under definite, uniform and general rules, powers which had previously been given only by special acts of incorporation. It applied to railroad companies in the sense in which the term had always been commonly employed. Passenger railways were expressly excluded from its operation. The companies to be chartered under it were made subject to the provisions of the General Railroad Law of 1849, and not one word was contained in it by which the legislation in regard to lateral railroads could be affected. The Act of the 28th of April 1871, was a supplement to the Act of 1868, simply reducing the number of the corporators to three in the case of a' road not exceeding five miles in length. These corporators, however, were still to constitute a railroad company, subject to the terms of the oi'iginal act and to those of the Act of 1849. Provision for so short a road could only have been made in order to secure some general public good. The supplement was manifestly intended to apply to settled communities, with a population at least so moderately dense as to require more than primitive means of conveyance, and with industries so varied and diversified as to require more than primitive facilities for the transportation of the products of machinery, labor and land. It was passed to provide for the convenience and necessities of masses of men, and not to promote private fortunes or develop private property. The Commonwealth transfers to her citizens her power of eminent domain only when some existing public need is to be supplied, or some present public advantage is to be gained. She does not confer it with a view to contingent results which may or may not he produced, and may or may not justify the grant, as a projected speculation may prove
The facts found by .the master prove in the distinctest way that this railroad is a mere appertenance to the mines of the Hampton Coal Company. The reasons for his decision that it has been constructed for public use are speculative, strained and vague. They have in view remote and contingent conditions, of the realization of which nothing even of probability is shown by the report. The road is completed between the termini specified in its charter. The capital of the corporation has been nearly if not entirely expended. It cannot of course he said that it is impossible that new capital shall be subscribed, the hill that bounds the eastern terminus tunnelled, the coal lands beneath which the extension may be constructed developed, and industries created that, would make the enterprise of public importance and public use. But all these possibilities are too remote to be ground for anything beyond conjecture. To rest the legal’rights of parties on such chances would be simply to obliterate those rights. In its existing condition, not one element of public advantage has resulted from this road that would not be gained by the construction of any lateral railroad extending from a great highway like the Pennsylvania railroad to coal mines of the kind and capacity of those of the Hampton company. For the. distance of seven hundred and eighty feet, including the eastern terminus, the defendants are precluded from affording facilities for any business but their own by the very terms of the grant of the right of way they obtained from Johnston. They are confined to the use of the land for such purposes as are connected with the ordinary working of coal property. “ The conveyance of persons and property,” in the sense in which those words are used in the Act of 1868, would be out of the question. The connection with the Pennsylvania railroad is at a point fourteen hundred and fifty feet from any station, nearly one-third of the entire length of the Edgewood road, and the statement of the fact is alone sufficient to make any idea of using it for the conveyance of passengers preposterous. There is the coal of the Hampton company to be carried, and there is nothing else. ’
Hardly as the rule may bear on these defendants, it is the plain duty of the courts to prevent the perversion of enactments passed for one purpose in order to subserve other and inconsistent objects.
To prevent the chance of misconception, the statement is repeated that the question of the legislative power to grant the right of eminent domain to associations of individuals for corporate purposes, has not been considered. It may be added that nothing which has been said has been designed to affect, limit, or disturb the corporate organization or the general corporate power of the Edgewood Railroad Company. The points decided are briefly recapitutated:
I. When the bill was presented to the Common Pleas, the plaintiffs had title to the land the defendants had appropriated.
II. On this land the defendants have laid and are operating a lateral railroad for private use, without the observance of any of the forms prescribed by the lateral railroad statutes.
III. The Acts of 1868 and 1871 were passed to provide for the organization and regulation of railroad corporations authorized to construct railroads, subject to the provisions of the General Railroad Law of 1849, for public use.
IV. The charter of the defendants did not warrant the appropriation they have made of the land of the plaintiffs for the purpose to which they have applied it. They are trespassers, as they would be if, under cover of their charter, they had entered on the land to build a turnpike or open a mine.
V. It follows that the defendants do not possess the right or franchise to do the acts which have resulted in the injury of which the plaintiffs complain. And in the circumstances of this ease, under the Act of the 19th of June 1871, a bill for an injunction is the appropriate remedy for the wrong.
Decree affirmed, and appeal dismissed, at the costs of the appellants.