152 Pa. 153 | Pa. | 1893
Opinion by
The questions presented by these cases are exclusively of law, and may be conveniently summed up as, first, has the legislature authorized the appellant companies, to do the acts complained of, and, secondly, if so, has such authority become operative by the consent of the municipal councils, validly given ?
It is conceded that no such authority is contained in the charter of the companies. But by the act of May 8,1876, P. L. 147, “ Passenger railways in any and all cities of the first class .... may use other than animal power .... whenever authorized so to do by the councils of such city, and the limitations contained in any of the charters of passenger railway companies, restricting them to the use of horse power, be and the same are hereby repealed, provided,” etc. If this statute is constitutional, it supplies the necessary authority. It is claimed however that it transgresses the prohibition of article 8, section 7, of the constitution, in that it is a local or special law amending or extending the charter of a corporation. But under the settled construction of this section, classification of ¡subjects, including cities, is permissible, and legislation which applies alike to all the members of a class, is not local or special but general. The important inquiry, therefore, is whether the act of 1876 is upon a subject as to which the classification ■of cities is proper. Repeated decisions of this court have .marked out the lines upon which such classification may proceed. It is not necessary to cite them all, but in one-of the .latest, Wyoming Street, 137 Pa. 494 (503), our Brother Williams has put the test into the compactest phrase: “ The test therefore by which all laws may be tried is their effect. If they operate upon the exercise of some power or duty of a municipality of the given class .... they are general,” and he gives, as an example, “ an act relating to the lighting of streets in cities of the third class would be a general law.” The control of the vehicles that shall be used on the public streets for the general conveyance of passengers, the rate of speed and the motive power by which they shall be propelled, is equally or even more peculiarly the subject of municipal duty. In fact public conveyances, whether ferry boats, barges, hackney coaches or omnibuses, have been subjects of police regulation and license as long as they have been known or used in ■Pennsylvania. The act of 1876 is therefore upon a subject
The learned court below thought itself bound by the decision in Weinman v. Pass. Ry. Co., 118 Pa. 192, but there is a distinction between the cases that is capable of sharp definition. The statute involved in that case was one relating to the formation of corporations. In the language of the opinion “ the subject of this statute is street railway companies, which is a subject for general legislation; while the statute professes to deal only with a limited number of these railways, and these are selected by reference to their location in certain cities. Under the guise of a general law, we have here one which is special, because it relates to a few members of the general class of corporations known as street railway companies; and local because its operations are confined to particular localities.” The essence of that decision is that the formation of corporations, their corporate powers, capital stock, dividends, etc., have no relation to the classification of cities, and cannot be made in any way to depend thereon. The act of 1876 on the contrary as we have seen has nothing to do with the formation, stock or dividends of passenger railway companies, but refers solely to the management of their cars on the public streets, a subject having close relation to the powers and duties of the municipal authorities to which the act commits its control.
An interesting and most important question, whether the grant of a right to build a passenger railway, or any similar franchise, does not carry with it, at least in the absence of specific limitations or prohibitions, the right from time to time to operate it by new methods, and motive powers, developed in
Coming now to the second question, whether the legislative grant has been made operative by the assent of councils, we find that by ordinances of various dates in 1891 and 1892, consent to the erection of the needful appliances and the operation of the roads by overhead electric wires, was given by councils to the Continental, the West Philadelphia, and the Twenty-second Street Railways, each specifically by name. The Philadelphia Traction Company was not named in any of the ordinances, and as it alone had authority in its charter to use the electric system, the learned court below held the consent to be insufficient. As we have however held the act of 1876 to be constitutional, and, as that act supplies the authority wanting in the charters, it might be enough to stop here, and rest the case upon that statute. But as another view leads to the same result, it will be well to present that also.
It appears in the answers and is undisputed that the Philadelphia Traction Company is the lessee for long terms of years of the three other companies defendant, and that each of them is operated exclusively by its lessee. In each case the two companies, lessor and lessee, are in the exclusive management and operation of the latter, which has all the powers and authority of -the lessor, except the sole reserved franchise to be a corporation, and has, in addition, its own express and specific franchise to make contracts and lease and operate roads, and furnish motive power. In their aspect to the public as regards their powers and their duties, the two companies are as one, and in the doing of any specific thing whether it should be done with the right hand or the left, is to the public immaterial. What the public interests are concerned with is the thing itself which is to be done, not the technical name of the corpo
Decrees reversed, injunctions dissolved, and bills dismissed with costs.