80 Kan. 141 | Kan. | 1909
The opinion of the court was delivered by
This action was brought by the New Era Milling Company to recover $303U3 from the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company for alleged unreasonable, unjust and excessive freight
In making a charge for its proportion of the through shipment the defendant required the plaintiff to pay five cents more per hundred pounds on the shipments coming to it over the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and the St. Louis & San Francisco railroads than was charged for shipments originating on its own line and those of the Denver, Enid &-Gulf and the St. Louis, El Reno & Western railroad companies. These charges, it was alleged, are unreasonable, unjust and illegal, and for the sum of the charges a judgment was asked.
The defendant company answered that the shipments from Arkansas City, Kan., to points in Oklahoma and
The objection that a state court has no jurisdiction in cases of this kind was overruled, and upon the facts of the case judgment for the amount of the claim was awarded to the plaintiff. Only one contention is made here, and that is that the question whether the freight charges were unreasonable and unjust is for the determination of the interstate commerce commission and is entirely outside the authority of a state court. It must be held that the district court was without jurisdiction to adjudicate the claim of plaintiff. The transportation of flour, received by the railroad companies in Kansas to be shipped over their own and connecting lines, on through bills of lading and by continuous trips, to points beyond the state, is to be regarded as interstate commerce, and each of the companies as en
It is suggested that one of the tariffs was invalid because it did not contain a proper classification, and did not state the terminal charges separately, and, further, that it was not duly posted. There is nothing substantial in the objection to classification, and as far as the
The judgment of the district court is reversed and the cause remanded for further proceedings.