72 N.J.L. 383 | N.J. | 1905
The opinion of the court was delivered by
These demurrers challenge the legal sufficiency of four special pleas that have been interposed to the first count of the declaration herein. The declaration has already been sustained on demurrer. Jersey City v. Consoli
The declaration shows that by its charter (Pamph. L. 1859, p. 411), the Jersey City and Bergen Eailroad Company was authorized to construct a railroad from some point on the Kill von Kull, at or near Bergen Point, to the Newark turnpike road leading from Jersey City to Newark, with one or more branches extending to the several ferries of the county of Hudson south of the city of Hoboken, provided that in constructing said railroad or branches through any of the streets of Jersey City the consent of the common council of the city should first be obtained; that by city ordinance approved December 20th, 1859, the company was authorized to lay a single track, with turnouts, in certain streets within the city limits, and to run cars thereon under certain restrictions and conditions, one of which was that it should pay annually to the city a license fee of $10 for each car; that this ordinance was accepted by the company and the tracks and turnouts thereby authorized were constructed; that by a supplement to the charter, approved March 17th, 1860 (Pamph. L., p. 393), it was enacted that the company, in laying, repairing and maintaining its rails and constructing its roads in the streets of Jersey City should be subject to such conditions as the common council, in the ordinance granting consent to lay such rails and construct said road, should have imposed or should impose upon the company; that the company having completed more than two miles of its railroad, and having constructed the tracks and turnouts authorized by the ordinance of 1859, commenced running horse cars thereon, and
Each of the four pleas under review sets forth a supple-
One of the pleas sets up that by virtue of this act any obligation of the Jersey City and Bergen Railroad Company, or its successors and assigns, including the defendant, to pay license fees pursuant to the terms of the several ordinances that antedated the passage of the act of 1867, was released, discharged, repealed and abrogated. Another plea attributes the like effect to the act with respect to the ordinances adopted after its passage. The remaining two pleas contain the additional averment that upon the passage and approval of the act of 1867 the Jersey City and Bergen Railroad Company, by
The present demurrers, therefore, raise three questions, viz.: First, whether the supplement of 1867 to the charter of the Jersey City and Bergen Railroad Company by force of its own terms discharged the obligation to pay license fees for cars run on tracks laid under city ordinances passed prior to the passage of the supplement; second, whether, in view of the terms of the supplement, there is any obligatipn to pay license fees for cars run on tracks laid under ordinances passed after the passage of the supplement, and third, whether the alleged contemporary and continuous construction placed upon the supplement of 1867, as manifested by the conduct of the municipal corporation on the one hand, and of the Jersey City and Bergen Railroad Company and its assigns, including the defendant, on the other hand, according to the averments of the pleas, has given such effect to the supplement of 1867 as to discharge the obligation to pay license fees.
We are unable to find in the act of 1867 any legislative intent that the company should be discharged from the obligations previously undertaken by it pursuant to legislative authority. As was pointed out by Mr. Justice Dixon, in Jersey City v. Jersey City and Bergen Railroad Co., 41 Vroom 360, 362, the power of the municipality to impose, and of the railroad company to accept, the conditions prescribed by the
It is the established rule that statutes are not to be so construed as to interfere with vested rights if their terms admit of any other reasonable construction. End. Stat., § 273. This is but a branch of the rule that statutes are not ordinarity to be given a retrospective effect, and this rests at bottom upon the principle that it is the proper function of the legislature to prescribe a rule of conduct for the future, and not to subvert that which has been done in the past. Where vested rights are in question, the injustice of disturbing them furnishes an additional reason against giving a retroactive effect to a statute whose terms do not clearly require it. As was said by Justice Knapp, speaking for the Court of Errors and Appeals, in Citizens’ Gaslight Co. v. Alden, 15 Vroom, 648 (at p. 653 ) : “Laws, generally, are enacted for the regulation of future affairs and conduct, and to establish the basis on which rights may thereafter under them be rested, and are not usually designed to alter or affect the quality or legal relations of past acts and concluded transactions, much less to disturb rights which have arisen under laws running concurrently with their birth.” See, also, Town of Belvidere v. Warren Railroad Co., 5 Vroom 193, 196; City of Elizabeth v. Hill, 10 Id. 555, 558; Roxbury Lodge v. Hooking, 31 Id. 439, 443. In the general “act relative to statutes,” approved March 27th, 1874 (Gen. Stat., p. 3194), it is by the third section declared that the repeal of any statutory provision by this act, or by any other act thereafter passed, is not to affect or impair any act done or right vested or accrued before such repeal shall take effect. And in
Nor are we able to see that the act of 1867 has any effect in altering or modifying the terms of the ordinances of 1871 and 1874, adopted subsequently to its passage and accepted by the company. Certainly the statute, while it gave the consent of the general legislature to the construction of the tracks therein specified, was not intended to disable the company from constructing additional'trades pursuant to its chartered powers, provided it obtained the consent of Jersey City, as required by the charter. Nor is there anything in the act that disables the municipality from imposing reasonable terms as a condition of its consent, as impliedly authorized by the charter and expressly authorized by the supplement of 1860.
But were it otherwise, and although the company held no direct legislative grant of power to construct the lines authorized by the ordinances of 1871 and 1874, and although the city had no power either to give consent or to impose conditions upon assuming to give consent, we do not see how these considerations can avail the present defendant. By the averments of the decláration, admitted for the purposes of these demurrers, it appears that in fact municipal consent was given in the ordinances of 1871 and 1874; in fact conditions were imposed by those ordinances precisely as in the ordinance of April 24th, 1863, among which was tire payment of annual license fees; in fact the ordinances were accepted by the company subject to those conditions, and the lines were constructed by it and have since been maintained and operated by it and its successors, including this defendant. It is now too late for the defendant to set up that the de facto contract thus entered into and acted upon, and from which benefits have thus accrued to the defendant and its predecessors, was ultra vires the municipal corporation. Camden and Atlantic Railroad Co. v. May’s Landing, 19 Vroom 530.
And finally, we are unable to see that the express agree
It is true, tire pleas aver that the company ceased to pay license fees with the consent and approval of the plaintiff. But the plaintiff is a municipal corporation, a public body politic, acting for public purposes only, through agents of limited powers, chosen by the people for defined public purposes. Our attention is not called to anything in the charter of Jersey City, or in any other act of the legislature, that empowered the municipal authorities of that city either to bar the public rights by non-action or to participate in the functions of the general legislature of the state by assuming to place a construction upon its legislative acts.
The plaintiff is entitled to judgment upon the demurrers.